Villagers see red after tanker mows down boy

LUCKNOW Hundreds of villagers turned violent and pelted police personnel with stones after a 13-year-old boy was crushed to death by a speeding water tanker on the

LUCKNOW Hundreds of villagers turned violent and pelted police personnel with stones after a 13-year-old boy was crushed to death by a speeding water tanker on the city’s outskirts in Kakori on Tuesday morning. After the incident, traffic movement on the Lucknow-Hardoi road remained disrupted for four hours, said police.

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The incident happened when one Anurag Rawat, a Class 6 student of a government upper primary school, was hit by the tanker near Zehta village turn while he was going to attend classes around 8am, said cops.

They said the tanker coming from Hardoi hit the boy’s bicycle causing him fatal injuries. The boy was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was declared brought dead.

A sub-inspector in Kakori said locals chased the tanker and nabbed its driver Surendra Yadav. The villagers beat him up before he was rescued by cops and taken to the police station.

The villagers got irked soon after getting the news of the boy’s death. They blocked the road demanding ex-gratia of ₹50 lakh for the boy’s family and a government job for one member of his family. Moreover, the villagers also pelted the police with stones when they tried to remove the road blockade, he added.

District police spokesman Ashish Dwivedi the protest ended after villagers were assured of ex-gratia to the boy’s kin. Moreover, the tanker’s driver was arrested after an FIR of reckless driving and causing death due to negligence was lodged against him with Kakori police station.