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Accused insisted on taking official killed in Delhi BMW crash to faraway hospital
Sandeep Kaur, 54, the wife of the finance ministry official Navjot Singh, 56, who was riding the motorcycle, told police that Makkad ignored their pleas to take them to the nearest hospital
The woman driving the allegedly speeding BMW car, which rammed into a motorbike and killed a finance ministry official on Delhi’s Ring Road on Sunday, took him and his wife, who was riding pillion and also severely injured, to a faraway hospital despite pleas to take the couple to the nearest facility.
A police officer aware of the matter said the father of the accused is known to one of the three owners of the hospital where the victims were first taken.
Sandeep Kaur, 54, the wife of the finance ministry official Navjot Singh, 56, who was riding the motorcycle, told police that Gagan Preet Makkad, the accused, ignored their pleas to take them to the nearest hospital. She said her husband was unconscious and needed immediate treatment, and could have been saved if he had been treated in time.
Kaur alleged Makkad deliberately took them to the small hospital 22 km away. Kaur said when she gained consciousness, they were being taken in a van to the hospital. “I kept telling the woman who was in the van with us to take us to a nearby hospital, but she did not,” police quoted Kaur as saying in the first information report (FIR).
Kaur said that while on the stretcher, she again asked the woman to take them to a better hospital. Eventually, the couple was brought to a private hospital in Dwarka, where she is undergoing treatment.
Police said Singh and Kaur, residents of Hari Nagar, were returning home when the car hit them while a bus was moving to their right side. The car hit a divider and overturned after colliding with the motorbike. The car occupants, Makkad, her husband, Parikshit, and their two children, were injured.
Deputy police commissioner (south west) Amit Goel said Makkad was taken into custody after she was discharged from the hospital. “Further legal proceedings are underway.”
Kaur said Singh suffered severe injuries to his head, face, and legs. “I also have multiple fractures in my hands and legs...suffered head injuries. I have 14 stitches on my head,” Kaur said in her statement to the police.
Makkad was arrested for culpable homicide not amounting to murder, obstruction of evidence, rash driving, and endangering lives.
Driver Mohammad Gulfam, who rushed the injured to the hospital in Azadpur from the Dhaula Kuan accident site, claimed many bystanders were recording videos of the scene but did not help. “I was driving a loading vehicle, stopped, and rushed the injured to a hospital in Azadpur after the man and the woman in the car asked me to take them there,” Gulfam told PTI.
