Beed Road Accident: Five Killed as Car Swerves to Avoid Potholes and Hits MSRTC Bus on Khamgaon-Pandharpur Highway; Contractor Booked, Cause Under Investigation

What happened

On the morning of Sunday, 18 October 2026, a car carrying a family from Majalgaon to Tuljapur for darshan at the Tulja Bhavani temple crashed head-on into a Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) bus on the Khamgaon–Pandharpur National Highway, near Shindewadi Phata in Majalgaon tehsil of Beed district. Five people in the car died, including an 11-year-old boy, according to PTI. The place is close to Patrud village and about 55 km from Beed town (PTI). Reports put the time anywhere between about 10 a.m. and 11.30 a.m.; PTI and most outlets say about 11 a.m.

Police told PTI that the car was heading towards Tuljapur when it swerved to avoid potholes and hit the bus coming from the opposite direction. An official quoted by PTI said CCTV footage showed the speeding car lose control while trying to get past potholes on a bridge. We have not seen the footage ourselves, so we rely on those descriptions. The front of the bus was badly damaged and the car was crushed. Pudhari reports that the car’s airbags opened.

The family was travelling during Navratri, a season when devotees from Beed, Parbhani and Hingoli use this route in large numbers, according to Civic Mirror. Locals told several Marathi outlets that the stretch between Majalgaon and Telgaon has big cracks and potholes and that there have been earlier accidents.

The people

All five who died were in the car, and Marathi reports say they died at the spot. PTI named them, and said they included a man and his 11-year-old son. Names and ages differ between outlets (the boy is 11 in PTI and Civic Mirror, 12 or 13 elsewhere), so we are not repeating them here, out of respect for the families. The dead were mostly young men from Majalgaon and nearby places; one is described as a cook from Rajasthan in some reports.

Saam TV, Deshdoot, Civic Mirror and a PTI video said one more person in the car was critically injured and under treatment. The hospital and the person’s condition were not reported in anything we opened. We found no report about the bus driver, the conductor or the number of passengers on board. LatestLY said the bus passengers were reported safe, but we did not find that confirmed elsewhere, so please treat it as unconfirmed.

Response and investigation

Police reached the spot quickly, local people helped with the rescue, and the dead and injured were taken to a nearby hospital, where the five were declared dead (Civic Mirror). The bodies were then sent for post-mortem (Deshdoot).

Residents blocked the highway in a ‘rasta roko’ protest and traffic was stopped for several hours, until senior police and district officials arrived, calmed the crowd and cleared the road (PTI). Tarun Mitra reported that villagers ended the blockade after Majalgaon Rural police assured them of strict action. Villagers blamed poor construction and maintenance, and demanded a culpable homicide case against the road contractor. Deshdoot reported villagers saying that 50 to 70 people had died on this highway over the past year despite written complaints. That is a claim by residents, and we have found no official figure.

Sakal reported on 19 October that a case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder has been registered at Majalgaon Gramin police station against the contractor of Dilip Buildcon (DBL) and the concerned engineer. The complaint alleges that poor-quality work and potholes on the cement highway made the car go out of control. This is a complaint and a booking, not a finding. ETV Bharat reported on 18 October that Majalgaon Rural police had registered a case over the crash, without saying against whom. Sakal is the only report we found that names the accused. Neither gave the sections, the FIR number or the complainant’s name, so please treat who has been booked as one outlet’s report until police or court records confirm it. TV9 Marathi adds that, some days before the crash, a central team had inspected the road and checked the quality of the work after the local MP, Bajrang Sonawane, complained about it; we found this in one report only, and what the team found has not been reported. We found no statement from NHAI, MSRTC, the district administration or the company, no announcement of compensation and no report that the potholes have been repaired. Last checked: 20 October 2026, about 2 p.m. IST.

Why this matters

A pothole is not usually a killer by itself. The danger comes from what a driver does in the second before reaching it. On a two-way highway, a sudden swerve can take a car into the oncoming lane or off the road, and a bus or truck coming the other way has no time to react. At 80 or 90 km an hour, a car covers about 25 metres every second, so a driver who notices a damaged patch late has very little room to choose.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) recorded 2,161 deaths on pothole roads in 2023, up from 1,856 in 2022. That is about one in 80 of the 1,72,890 road deaths that year (police-recorded figures). The number is small next to deaths on straight roads, but it is rising, and each of those deaths happened on a stretch that somebody is responsible for repairing. We covered another Maharashtra highway crash with an unresolved cause in our Atgaon highway crash case study.

Lessons

• Drivers: brake early and stay in your lane. If you see a pothole or a broken patch, slow down in a straight line well before it. Hitting a pothole at low speed usually means a tyre or rim problem. A swerve across the centre line can mean a head-on crash. Keep both hands on the wheel and look well ahead, not just at the patch in front of the bonnet. This is general driving advice, and it is not a finding about what the driver in Beed did, since the investigation is still on.
• Slow down on bridges and their approaches. Joints, broken edges and filled-in patches are common there. After rain, water hides how deep a pothole is, and at dusk or night headlights show it late. See our over-speeding and drunk-driving data for how speed raises the toll.
• Wear a seat belt in the back seat too. The Motor Vehicles Act expects every car occupant to be belted, and Section 194B carries a fine for each person who is not. Reports do not say whether those in the car were belted, so we cannot say what difference it would have made. Our helmet and seat belt guide explains why belts matter.
• On a state transport bus: most seats have no belts, so sit properly, keep bags out of the aisle, do not stand on the footboard, and if you feel the driver brake or swerve hard, brace with both hands on the seat in front.
• Report potholes, with a photo. On national highways, call NHAI’s toll-free helpline 1033, which takes complaints about road conditions and potholes as well as accidents. The NHAI Rajmargyatra app also lets you report a problem with a geo-tagged photo or video. For state roads and village roads, write to the district collector or the state PWD office, and keep a copy of your complaint. Written, dated complaints matter if a case is filed later.
• Bystanders: call 112 or 108 at once. Give a landmark (here, the petrol pump at Shindewadi Phata), the number of injured and who is not breathing. Do not drag someone who may have a neck or back injury unless there is a danger such as fire. Our witness’s safe-help guide and the golden hour guide explain what to do until the ambulance reaches. Section 134A of the Motor Vehicles Act protects a Good Samaritan, and our Good Samaritan law explainer covers what you cannot be forced to do.
• Residents and panchayats: when a road is breaking up, a joint written complaint from the village, with photos and dates, is harder to ignore than a phone call. Ask for a temporary warning board or reflective markers until the patch is repaired.

What is still not known

We do not know the exact time of the crash, the speed of the car, or whether the driver braked before swerving. We do not know whether anyone on the bus was hurt, who the injured person in the car is and how they are, (reports up to 20 October still say only that the person was critically injured), or under which sections the case was registered and who exactly is named in it. We have not seen an NHAI, MSRTC or contractor statement, or any report on who was responsible for maintaining this stretch at the time. Whether the potholes were reported earlier, whether the families will get compensation, and what the police investigation finds are all open. We will update this page when official findings are published.