Workers saw off the old peepul tree that came crashing down on this taxi on Hospital Road early on Tuesday, killing two members of a family. Picture by Sanjay Chattopadhyaya

A roadside peepul tree fell on a moving taxi along the racecourse early on Tuesday, crushing to death a father and daughter in a family of four headed for a seaside holiday in Mandarmani.

Shyamal Mishra, 39, and daughter Ananya, 9, died where they were seated, while wife Moni, 32, and taxi driver Sukanta Nandi were critically injured.

Crouched under the smashed car roof next to her bleeding mother and sister, 16-year-old Antara Mishra was the only one who escaped the accident on Hospital Road almost unscathed.

Around 5.30am — within seconds of the tragedy — the Class X student reached for her cellphone to dial her uncle for help. Those were apparently the last few words she spoke throughout Tuesday.

“Antara is so shocked by what she has been through that she isn’t even crying, let alone speak. Her sister’s exams had just ended and the family was looking forward to the trip. They looked so happy when they set off for Howrah to catch the train. I can’t believe this has happened,” cried Prabir Halder, the uncle who received Antara’s call.

“When I reached the spot, Ananya was clutching her favourite doll,” Halder told Metro, standing outside the SSKM morgue in the afternoon to receive the bodies after post-mortem.

Moni, who received nine stitches to close a gash in her head, is scheduled to undergo surgery on Wednesday at CMRI. Driver Nandi, who suffered head injuries, is undergoing treatment at a nursing home near his house in Budge Budge.

Nandi was driving the family from Nungi, on the southern fringes of the city, to Howrah railway station to board the 6.40am Tamralipta Express to Digha and then travel to Mandarmani by road. The Mishras were to accompany the families of two of Shyamal’s colleagues in the directorate of textiles.

The two families boarded the train after failing to contact the Mishras over phone despite several attempts. By the time they learnt about the tragedy from common friends, the train had reached Digha.

“We had postponed the trip by two weeks so that Shyamal and his family could be part of it. Who could have imagined that the holiday would end so horribly even before it had begun,” said colleague and friend Deepak Kumar Mistri.

Police termed the accident a “freak tragedy” that could have befallen anyone passing by that stretch on Tuesday morning. The only question that the cops raised was why the taxi was headed for Howrah through Hospital Road instead of the shorter, more convenient Strand Road.

“The road where the accident occurred is a much longer route to Howrah from Nungi,” an officer said.

The roof of the smashed taxi had to be removed with gas cutters to extricate the bodies of Shyamal and Ananya, the police said.

“Shyamal was seated next to the driver and his younger daughter was right behind him when the accident occurred. His wife was in the middle and Antara sat beside the right window,” a senior officer at Hastings police station said.

So could Tuesday’s tragedy have been prevented?

The joint director of the botanical garden in Shibpur, Himadri Sekhar Debnath, said the tree that came crashing down had probably grown too large for its weak roots.

“The tree’s roots must have been shallow because of easy availability of water on the surface. That is why trees in the botanical garden get uprooted easily whenever there is a storm,” he explained.

The depth of a large tree’s roots should ideally be twice its height.

Debnath said more old, unkempt trees would fall without warning if these were not pruned. “Apart from pruning the branches regularly, soil should be dumped at the base to keep it firm,” he suggested.

Workers requisitioned to saw off the uprooted tree trunk blamed green activists for old trees in the city not being pruned regularly. “The moment they see someone cutting the branches of an overgrown tree, they start ranting about greenery being destroyed,” one of them said.

The Mishras’ relatives and friends blamed the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC) for Tuesday’s accident. “It could have happened to any of us. It is the civic body’s duty to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again,” family friend Partha Roy Chowdhury said.

The CMC passed the buck to the PWD. “The PWD is responsible for the upkeep of Hospital Road and the trees lining it,” said Debasis Kumar, the mayor-in-council member in charge of parks and gardens.

The PWD said it could not prune trees without the CMC’s approval. “We can prune a tree only if the CMC tells us,” said PWD secretary Ajit Ranjan Bardhan.

What about dumping soil around the base to increase the stability of old trees?

The PWD supposedly needs another department’s permission to do the job. “We need the forest department’s nod for that,” Bardhan claimed.