NEW DELHI: An
elderly woman and her 25-year-old grandson were killed instantly inside their newly bought car when a
speeding cluster bus rammed it from behind, sandwiching the victims between two buses in northeast Delhi’s
Nand Nagri on Tuesday afternoon.
The victims, Amit Garg and Leelawati Devi, 63, were travelling behind a
DTC bus that had come to a halt due to congestion on the road ahead. The brand new i10, with Amit at the wheel, was stationary when the
cluster bus came hurtling down from behind and crushed it.
“It was a horrific crash. For a moment, I thought the car had vanished. But when I went closer, I saw it sandwiched between the two buses. Blood was spilling out of the mangled remains,” an eyewitness, Irfan, told TOI.
Gas cutters had to be brought in to extricate the bodies of Amit and his grandmother from the car.
Wait for a ride in new car won’t end for these 2 kids
The driver of the offending vehicle managed to flee from the spot, even though a huge crowd tried to chase him down. He was later arrested.
Police said the victims were taken to Guru Teg Bahadur hospital, where their postmortem was conducted and the bodies later handed over to the family, which lives in Mandoli, near Nand Nagri. The two were returning home from the SDM office, where they had gone for some work.
“My grandson had recently bought the car. He has two daughters, aged two and five, who were waiting eagerly for him to return as he had promised to take them on an outing,” said a grief-stricken Hukum Chand Gupta.
There was chaos at the crash site for almost an hour as a crowd vented their ire over the deaths. Police said angry people continued to protest on the road even after the bodies were brought out of the mangled car and taken to the hospital.
The victims’ family alleged that police did not help in extricating the bodies. “I have a video that shows cops around the car, but the ones who are helping cut out the roof are the locals who had gathered there in huge numbers. Passersby brought rods among other items to cut the roof of the vehicle to help them get out,” said Anil Agarwal, Amit’s uncle.
Police said that the green DTC bus in front was heading to Anand Vihar while the cluster bus was going towards Shahbad Dairy.
A senior police official said a team was formed immediately after the crash, which contacted the owner of the bus and identified the absconding driver.
Police said Amit worked with his father and uncles at their cloth manufacturing company while Leelawati was a homemaker. The family said they were having a difficult time answering the daughters, who have been constantly asking where their father is.
Police said they had registered a case of rash and negligent driving causing death at the Nand Nagri police station and efforts were on to nab the driver.
The mangled remains
