Two killed as car collides with punctured pickup on Delhi-Meerut Expressway

The pickup suffered a puncture and the driver lost control of the vehicle on the DME. The Dzire car coming behind it could not stop on time and crashed into the commercial vehicle

Two persons were killed after a mini pickup van travelling on the Delhi-Meerut Expressway (DME) stretch in Ghaziabad suffered a sudden tyre puncture on Wednesday morning and the car coming behind it ended up crashing into it, senior police officers said, adding that a woman car passenger and the pickup van driver were killed in the accident.

The Swift Dzire car that was involved in the accident on Wednesday. A a woman car passenger and the pickup van driver were killed in the accident. (Sakib Ali/HT Photo)

Police identified the dead woman as Raj Rani Garg, 62, who was travelling in the Swift Dzire car to her native place in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, along with her husband, Virendra Nath Garg, 65, and driver Satish Kumar, 30.

The police identified the other deceased, the pickup van driver, as Ramesh Kumar, 35, a resident of Karawal Nagar in Delhi.

According to police, the incident took place around 8am Wednesday when both vehicles were travelling on the Ghaziabad-Meerut carriageway of the DME under the jurisdiction of Masuri police station area.

“The pickup suffered a puncture and the driver lost control of the vehicle on the DME. The Dzire car coming behind it could not stop on time and crashed into the commercial vehicle. The collision led to death of the woman in the Dzire car and the driver of the pickup van. Our team reached the spot and found the pickup van with a punctured tyre,” said Naresh Kumar, station house officer, Masuri police station.

Kumar said the husband of the deceased woman and their car driver were taken to hospital for treatment and are stable.

“The bodies were sent for an autopsy and an FIR will be registered once a complaint is received,” said Naresh Kumar, assistant commissioner of police, Masuri/Muradnagar circle.

The traffic police also conducted an inspection of the accident site near “Hawa Hawai” restaurant, a diner fashioned out of a condemned A320 airbus.

The National Highways authority of India (NHAI) earlier said it was going to install view cutters on the expressway to obscure the view of the restaurant, which in itself was distracting drivers and causing accidents.

“This stretch has become unsafe for commuters as people often stop on the road to look at the aero restaurant and this, inadvertently, pose a risk to other commuters. A few accidents have also happened there. So, the highways authority has planned to cut the view of the stretch near the restaurant by installing view cutters over a stretch of about 600 metres,” said a NHAI official earlier.

On August 18, 2023, a mother-son duo on a bike were killed after crashing into a container truck in front of them. The traffic police said that the two were busy looking at the restaurant and did not spot the truck in front of them.