A senior police constable on night duty was crushed to death by a speeding trailer-truck at a village here in the wee hours today, police said.
The victim, Fakira Sukdu Tadvi (45), was working as a driver of the control room van attached to the Sahapur police station.
At around 3.30 AM, he spotted a vegetable-laden tempo overturned on a road at Sonale village between Sahapur and Bhiwandi talukas of Thane district. Tadvi got down from his van to help occupants of the tempo.
At the same time, a trailer truck coming from behind hit the tempo crushing Tadvi, Bhiwandi taluka police station inspector Dhananji Kshirsagar said.
The policeman sustained severe wounds in the mishap and was rushed to Fortis Hospital at Kalyan where doctors declared him dead, he said.
The body was shifted to a government hospital for postmortem and will be later taken to his hometown in Jalgaon for the last rites.
Senior police officials from Thane went to the hospital to pay their respects to Tadvi who died on duty.
Meanwhile, the Bhiwandi taluka police registered a case of 304-A (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the IPC and other relevant sections of the Motor Vehicles Act.
A search was on for the truck driver who fled from the spot after the accident, police added.