Tragic Car Crash Claims Lives of Two Cousins and a Teenage Friend in Pune
They grew up together and were inseparable,” said Prasad Bhandari, a real estate dealer and the grieving father of Yash Bhandari (23), a software engineer who was killed in a car crash along with his cousin Rutvik Bhandari (23), an MBA graduate, and their teenage friend Khushwant Kishor Tekwani (19).
The three youths died after their speeding car rammed into a pillar of the Bund Garden police station around 5 am on Sunday. Police identified the deceased cousins as Rutvik Vinayak Bhandari alias Om, a resident of Pimpri Gaon and an MBA graduate in finance who worked for a private firm; and Yash Prasad Bhandari, a software engineer employed with a firm in Balewadi. Their friend, Khushwant Kishor Tekwani from Beed district, was a BTech student at MIT College in Pune.
The two were born just six months apart. They grew up together and were inseparable. The two were not just cousins but were best friends. I don’t know how our family will face this loss. Losing a child is the greatest pain for a man,” said Prasad Bhandari. Rutvik’s father Vinayak and Prasad are brothers.
The Bhandari family is from Karnataka but has been in Pune for the last few years,” said Rutvik’s maternal uncle. “After completing his MBA, Rutvik went to the UK briefly for a project and had returned very recently. He had started working for a private firm. While Rutvik was in the UK, the two cousins used to continuously be in touch.”
Yash’s classmate from the BTech computer science engineering course, Pranav Landge, said, “We completed our graduation two years ago. We had recently spoken and we together were going to collect the degree certificates from the college because we could not collect it during last year’s convocation. We all have started working with companies, but we always used to talk about doing something different, on our own. Yash was a bright student, rather the brightest in our class. Very good at basic concepts and their application.”
Officials said Khushwant hailed from Beed and his father, Kishor Tekwani, is a lawyer practicing in the Beed court. His family reached Pune late on Sunday afternoon.
