When 18-year-old Siddharth Singh, a student of business administration, left with a group of bikers on a trip to Jaipur, his spirits were high. The Vasant Kunj resident hit the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway on his high-powered sports bike early on Friday. A few minutes later, after a fatal crash, all
that remained was a mangled mass of metal and a charred body.
Siddharth’s motorcycle crashed into a truck laden with 360 LPG cylinders at the South City flyover. “He was charred beyond recognition. Even locating his address was tough as all the documents in his pocket were destroyed in the fire,” said Kailash Devi, the inspector who first saw his body.
The truck caught fire and its driver fled the spot. Still, a major inferno was avoided owing to the presence of mind of two beat constables who promptly informed the fire service.
“Two fire tenders doused the fire before it could reach the truck loaded with over 300 cylinders, preventing a conflagration. Even if one cylinder had caught fire, the resultant blast could have damaged buildings adjacent to the flyover such as Hotel Crown Plaza, Unitech Tower and Japanese hostel,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (traffic) S P Gupta.
Siddharth’s father Krishan Partap Singh, an executive director with Dalmia Sugar Mills, said his son was riding the bike on a valid driver’s licence. “He had bought it from a Delhi-based automobile dealer attached to a Mumbai importer. Sidharth left home at about 5.00 a.m. saying that he was going to Jaipur with his friends and that they would return by tomorrow. None of those friends have bothered to tell us how the tragedy happened. I guess one of them came to our colony and informed the security guard who broke the news to me,” said Singh.
An alumnus of G.D. Goenka Public School, Sidhartha had just enrolled for a bachelor’s degree in business administration at the Indian Institute of Planning and Management.