Drunk woman driver rams SUV carrying family in Delhi, 1 dead

The car speeding on the opposite side rammed the divider and clambered onto the SUV, in which eight members of a family were travelling.

A 38-year-old woman was killed and her 13-year-old daughter critically injured after a car jumped the divider on a Punjabi Bagh flyover and rammed their car late on Friday night. Police said the car that jumped the divider was being driven by a 22-year-old woman who was drunk. Police arrested the woman, but two men and another woman accompanying her fled the scene.

The car that the accused was driving rammed the divider and hit the SUV on the other side at a flyover in Punjabi Bagh. (HT Photo)

According to the police, the incident took place around 11pm when two brothers Sudhir Sardana and Vimal Sardana, along with their wives and children, were returning home after visiting a temple in Chhatarpur.

Senior police officers said that the moment the two families, who were travelling in a Mahindra Quanto car, reached a flyover adjacent to the Punjabi Bagh flyover, a car speeding on the opposite side rammed the divider and clambered onto the Quanto, in which eight members of Sardana family were travelling.

Police said the woman, Shivani Malik, who was driving the S-Cross, and her three friends were on their way to a club in Gurugram from Connaught Place. Malik works a salon in Noida.

“Locals and witnesses said that the speed of the car approaching from opposite direction, a Maruti S-Cross, was so high that it went up in the air after hitting the divider and after hitting the Quanto, it turned turtle on another car that was passing by. Passersby stopped and helped the occupants of the cars get out. A PCR (police control room) call was then made and the police as informed,” said a police officer.

Police said Poonam and Chetanya were sitting right behind the driver’s seat, exactly where the other car hit the Quanto.

The family lives in Indra Nagar society in Adarsh Nagar in north Delhi.

Deputy commissioner of police (west) Monika Bhardwaj said that Shivani Malik, a resident of Mohan Nagar in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, was found to be drunk at the time of the accident.

“Malik was inebriated at the time of accident. While Malik was caught from the spot, her friend Damini and two other men managed to escape. A case of causing death due to negligence, for rash and negligent driving, culpable homicide not amounting to murder, and under other relevant sections has been registered at Punjabi Bagh police station. The matter is further being probed,” the DCP said.