Marathi actors Prarthana Behere, Aniket Vishwasrao's close brush with death after car hits divider

Popular Marathi actors Prarthana Behere and Aniket Vishwasrao had a close brush with death after their car hit a divider on the Pune-Mumbai Expressway on Monday morning. Behere, 25, suffered injuries, while Vishwasrao escaped unhurt.

The driver, Yusuf Shaikh, and the hairstylist, Swati Mane, also escaped unhurt. The actors were on their way to Kolhapur in Maharashtra to promote their film Maska when they met with an accident near Lonavla, a hill station near Mumbai.

According to reports, the driver wanted to bypass a stationary tempo, but he rammed the car into the divider. A case has been registered against Shaikh.

According to Shaikh, he was driving in the second lane when a vehicle on his right overtook him and that forced him to go into the third lane. He said he spotted the stationary tempo at the last minute and that triggered the accident.

A tempo was parked on the side of the road where the accident took place, as it had broken down. When the driver of the actor's car took a sharp turn to make its way out, it ran into a divider," an officer of the Expressway control room told Mid-Day.

Behere, who was in the rear seat, sustained a fracture in her right hand. The actors, the driver and the hairstylist were taken to Yash Hospital at Valvan (near Lonavla).

"We were travelling at a very high speed and the driver lost control of the vehicle when he tried to avoid a stranded tempo. Our car rammed into a rock. I was asleep and escaped unhurt, however, Prarthana fractured her right hand. It could have been fatal if it was not for that stone, we would have gone into a ditch nearby. It all happened in a fraction of a second," Hindustan Times quoted Vishwasrao as saying.