Crane on wrong side of road mangles 61-year-old Delhi woman under its wheels, driver arrested

The victim’s husband said the crane’s headlights were switched off at the time of the incident and so they couldn’t spot the approaching vehicle.

A crane hurtling down the wrong side of the road killed a 61-year-old pedestrian in south Delhi’s Dhaula Kuan on Sunday morning, police said.

Kranti Devi (in photo) was a sanitation worker at Delhi’s IGI airport. She and her husband were walking on a dark stretch near the Dhaula Kuan Metro station when a crane ran over her. (Photo sourced)

The woman, identified Kranti Devi, a sanitation worker at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, was mangled under the wheels of the crane.

Devi’s husband said the crane’s headlights were switched off at the time of the incident and so they couldn’t spot the approaching vehicle.

The police said initial probe revealed that the crane was being driven on the wrong side. They were looking into the allegations about the headlight.

Devender Arya, deputy commissioner of police (southwest), said a case of causing death due to negligence (Indian Penal Code section 304A) was registered against the driver, Awadh Vihari, 26, and he was arrested a few hours after he fled the spot.

On being asked why the stringent IPC section 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) was not applied, the DCP said that more sections could be added in the course of investigations.

Police said Devi lived in Jhareda Village in Delhi Cantonment. Her 64-year-old husband, Ho Ram Kharaliya, works as a labourer. The couple have five children.

“She was to retire from her job in June. She worked overtime, sometimes even on weekends, to support the family. She wanted to be able to provide a better life to her 12 grandchildren,” said the woman’s son, Satish Kharaliya.

Devi and her husband had attended their grandnephew’s wedding in Uttam Nagar and had taken a shared taxi to Dhaula Kuan on Sunday, from where they were to hire an auto-rickshaw to go home.

“We crossed the busy Dhaula Kuan road on a foot overbridge. We are elderly people and we followed the traffic rules. The young crane driver, however, didn’t care much for them,” said Ho Ram.

He said he was walking ahead of his wife on a dark stretch near the Dhaula Kuan Metro station when Devi suddenly cried out for help.

“I turned around and saw that she had been hit by the crane. Before I could help her, the crane ran over her head, killing her on the spot,” said Ho Ram .

He said the crane driver fled. “He didn’t even have the heart to stop and check on her,” said Ho Ram.

“The driver had to be reckless to mow down a person with a slow-moving vehicle like a crane,” said Devi’s younger son, Neetu.

The police said the crane belonged to a private individual and was being driven for being repaired. It hadn’t been hired for the construction of a flyover at Dhaula Kuan.

The Delhi Traffic Police’s figures from 2013 to 2017 show that cranes on an average caused more than eight deaths and 18 non-fatal accidents every year

Data released by the Delhi Traffic Police showed that in 2018, around 1,562 fatal road accidents were reported in the nation capital.

This, though marginally lower than the 1,565 crashes reported in 2017, resulted in 1.26% more deaths.