KOLKATA: A 46-year-old film executive producer had a lucky escape on Monday when a lamp post — uprooted after cables dangling from it got entangled with a KMC water tanker — fell on his car near Gangulypukur on the Prince Anwar Shah Road connector.CCTV footage captured from a car accessories shop showed the water tanker speeding past the flyover and dragging a mesh of cables with the uprooted lamp post. It fell on the roof of a black Honda City that was moving behind the civic vehicle.The uprooted lamp post“We were driving at a moderate speed when the lamp post fell on my car, just above my seat. Had it fallen on the windshield, it would have broken the glass and could have even killed my driver,” said Sanjay Kumar Pathak, a resident of Purbachal in Kasba, who was travelling towards the Jadavpur police station crossing.Low-hanging cables have been an eyesore for long, but Monday’s accident is a pointer that they are even potential killers. Additionally, expansion work on this stretch of road had exposed the foundation of the post, which might have been another reason why it was so easily uprooted.The dent on the car belonging to Sanjay Kumar PathakEarlier this month, mayor Firhad Hakim had issued instruction to clean up the cable mess in Alipore, Hazra, Harish Mukherjee Road and Park Street. KMC would construct underground ducts in these areas for the cables, he had promised.While most of these cables belong to local operators, cellphone companies, broadband service providers, even police have overhead fibre optic cable lines to carry data, voice and video. TOI has time and again highlighted how a mesh of wires dangling over roads poses threat to motorists. Last year, an 18-year-old youth had died on Park Circus Bridge No. 4 when his bike got entangled in a heap of cables lying on the roadside.According to a civic official, cables are tied around lamp posts without the civic authorities’ sanction.“This has been the practice since cable TV came to the city in 1990s but there has been little crackdown because the operators usually enjoy the patronage of those in power,” said the official.A regular along the stretch, Pathak said he had often noticed the mesh of wires hanging from lamp posts. “I have always considered them to be potential threats but never thought that I would myself experience an accident like this. I consider myself extremely lucky to escape without injury,” said Pathak, who has been associated with films like ‘Shankar Mudi’ and ‘Byomkesh-o-Agniban’.

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