Two dead, three critically hurt as speeding car rams auto head on

Gurugram A 15-year-old boy and an unidentified man, who was in his 60s, died when the shared autorickshaw they were travelling in collided, head-on, with a Hyundai Santro car near Pataudi, around 30 kilometres from the city. The police said the poor visibility due to fog on the Rewari-Pataudi Road caused the collision.

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The 15-year-old boy who died was identified as Monu Kumar, who was a resident of Nareda village in Pataudi. He was travelling with his grandmother, Savitri Devi (63), and uncle, Krishan, on his way back from a wedding in Bikaner in Rajasthan. The trio had deboarded a train at the Pataudi railway station and was on their way home when the incident took place.

“Three of us boarded an autorickshaw outside the station. There was another old man, who was seated silently and had to get down in a nearby village. The stretch was covered in fog and we were asking the driver to drive slowly as nothing was visible. He was driving hardly at a speed of 20kmpm when there was a sudden crash and I found myself lying on the road. Although Krishan and I suffered severe injuries, Monu died on the spot. I am feeling guilty for having taken him along for the wedding,” said Savitri, amid her sobs.

The body was handed over to the family after a post-mortem examination on Saturday afternoon.

The police said the accident took place near the Pahari village flyover, eight kilometres before Pataudi, when a speeding Santro driving the wrong side collided with the autorickshaw. The police said the Santro was being driven at 100kmph and the driver may have lost control of the vehicle, which reportedly took a sharp right turn before hitting the auto around 7am. The police said that at the time of the accident, there was dense fog on the road and visibility was reduced to a few metres.

The injured persons were rushed to hospitals in Rewari and Pataudi.

Preet Pal Sangwan, assistant commissioner of police (crime), said five people were in the autorickshaw, which overturned after colliding with a Santro. “The visibility was reduced sharply due to fog on the stretch and the Santro car driver was speeding. These are the reasons for the accident. A traffic jam was caused due to the pile-up. The police teams got the damaged vehicles removed from the accident site to clear up the jam,” Sangwan said.

The police said road accidents have increased due to dense fog in the morning.

Investigation officer, Hawa Singh, of the Pataudi police station, said the exact sequence of events that led to the mishap could not be ascertained as there was no eyewitness and the injured are unfit to give statements. The auto driver, identified as Manoj, is in a critical state and was shifted to the Rewari Hospital in the afternoon.

“The impact of the crash was such that three members of a family, including the minor who was thrown out, were severely injured. It took passersby around 10 minutes to rescue the injured,” Singh said.

Sangwan said the causalities would have been higher had there been more vehicles on the stretch at the time of the accident. “An analysis of the accident spot suggests the Santro driver, who was driving on the wrong side, could not see the auto coming from the opposite direction and collided with it head-on. The injured were first rushed to a local hospital, from where they were shifted to the private hospitals in Rewari and Pataudi,” he said.

The police said the car driver escaped, but the vehicle was seized. They are trying to identify the suspect through the registration number. A case was lodged against the driver under sections 279 (rash driving) and 304A (causing death by negligence) of the Indian Penal Code at the Pataudi police station.