Five of a bridegroom’s party die in Odisha road accident
BHUBANESWAR: Five of a bridegroom’s party including a father-daughter duo were killed and five others seriously injured when the SUV they were travelling collided head on with a truck on a bridge over Mahanadi River in Sonepur district late Friday night, said police.
Sonepur SP Sitaram Satpathy said 10 people from Nimna and Panchmahala village under Ullunda block of Sonepur district were returning after attending a marriage function at Kaudiamunda village when the Bolero jeep they were in ran into the truck over the Mahanadi bridge at around 1 am. Ashish Pandia and his daughter Siddhi Pandia were killed on the spot along with Pramod Pandia, Trayambak Meher and Subham Pandia.
Five others were rescued from the badly mangled vehicle by police and other rescue teams with the help of gas cutters.
All the injured were initially rushed to Sonepur hospital and subsequently shifted to Burla Medical College and Hospital for treatment after their condition deteriorated.
Fatalities rate in road accidents in Odisha is 33.33% higher than the national average. While 48 die in every 100 road accidents in Odisha, the national average is 36. There has been a steady increase in number of fatalities from 2014 (3,931) to 2020(4,738), an increase of about 21%.
As per State Road Safety Council officials, over-speeding contributed to 69 per cent of the deaths followed by violation of helmet law (41 per cent) and hit and run cases (20 per cent). The Supreme Court has recently pulled up the state government for not adopting a focused approach for preventing fatalities by enforcing stringent measures.