Cyrus Mistry, the Indian scion of one of the country’s most prominent empires, died in a road accident on a highway near Mumbai on Sunday, September 5th, 2022, while travelling to Mumbai.
Mistry, 54, was one of two people who died when the car they were traveling in hit a barrier between two lanes, according to Shrikant Shinde, a Maharashtra police official.
Mistry and his companions were travelling in a Mercedes car through the Palghar district of Maharashtra when the accident happened on Sunday afternoon, police said.
The vehicle is said to have hit a divider in the road, while crossing a bridge over a river, and Mistry subsequently died at the crash scene.
Two other people in the vehicle were injured and taken to hospital, he added. Autopsies would be carried out on the two deceased at a hospital in Mumbai, said Pradeep Dhodhi, a Palghar district medical official in the state of Maharashtra, where the accident took place.
Mistry was best known as the former chairman of Tata Sons, the massive Indian conglomerate that owned Jaguar, Land Rover and the Taj hotels.
The Irish-Indian businessman made headlines in 2011 when he was announced as Tata’s chosen successor, and became the first person not directly related to the Tata family to head the company bearing their name.
Mistry’s family was a major stakeholder in the Mumbai-based conglomerate, which runs top-tier companies across several sectors. In 2016, Mistry was replaced in a sudden corporate shakeup that led former Chairman Ratan Tata to come out of retirement to lead the firm on a temporary basis. The company operates in more than 100 countries – offering products including salt, steel and software – and had a revenue of $130bn (£110bn) last year.
“I am deeply saddened by the sudden and untimely demise of Mr. Cyrus Mistry,” Tata Sons Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran said in a statement shared with CNN Business on Monday.
“He had a passion for life and it is really tragic that he passed away at such a young age. My deepest condolences and prayers for his family in these difficult times.”
Other business and government leaders also reacted with shock over the weekend, taking to social media to express their condolences.
“The untimely demise of Shri Cyrus Mistry is shocking. He was a promising business leader who believed in India’s economic prowess,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted. “His passing away is a big loss to the world of commerce and industry.”
The crash brought into focus the country’s high number of road accidents, with government data showing that these claimed 150,000 lives in 2021 – an average of 18 per hour.
