TARN TARAN: Five devotees, including four women, were killed and 10 others injured, following a head-on collision between a truck and a tractor-trolley near Dubli village, 3 km from Patti on Thursday.
All the dead and injured were in the tractor-trolley and were returning home after paying obeisance at Gurdwara Bir Baba Budha Sahib near Chabal. There were 20 devotees, all residents of Dubli village, in the ill-fated tractor-trolley.
Police sources said the mishap occurred when the devotees were just 2 km from Dubli. The truck, moving at high speed, rammed into the tractor-trolley when the tractor driver was taking a turn to move on to the link road to the village.
The impact of the collision was so powerful that a portion of the truck fell on the trolley, which resulted in the death of five persons on the spot. A JCB was summoned by the cops to pull out the dead and injured from under the truck.
The injured were taken to the civil hospital at Patti from where most of them were referred to hospitals in Amritsar depending on the nature of their injuries.
{{/usCountry}}The injured were taken to the civil hospital at Patti from where most of them were referred to hospitals in Amritsar depending on the nature of their injuries.
{{/usCountry}}The deceased have been identified as Sukhjinder Kaur (35), Sukhwinder Kaur (17), Prabhjot Kaur (48), Ramandeep Kaur (17) and Harbabhajan Singh (65). Eight of the 10 injured were identified as Lovejit Singh, Sukhraj Singh, Bhupinder Singh, Pritpal Singh, Dharamvir Singh, Prabhjit Singh, Mohinder Singh and Joginder Singh.
SSP Manmohan Sharma along with other police officials reached the spot after being informed about the mishap. The SSP immediately ordered his officers to nab the truck driver. Thereafter, a hunt was launched and truck driver Gursewak Singh, who hails from Alladinpur village in the district, was nabbed from a hospital in Tarn Taran. He too had received minor injuries alongwith his helper. He is likely to be booked for reckless driving.
The dead bodies were handed over to their relatives after postmortem at the Patti civil hospital. They were later cremated at their village cremation ground.