Delhi woman killed, four injured in Agra-Lucknow expressway accident

AGRA: A woman died and four others suffered injuries in an accident on the Agra-Lucknow expressway when their Maruti Baleno after their speeding car hit a nilgai's carcass on Tuesday morning.


The accident occurred at 5.50am, milestone 83 near Nagla Ramfal village of Karhal police jurisdiction of Mainpuri district. The victims were heading to Gursahaiganj in Kannauj district when their hatchback hit a carcass of a Nilgai.



The deceased was identified as Sania (25), wife of Delhi based businessman Ravi Kumar. She was a resident of Block A, Jahangirpuri. Her body was sent for postmortem, while her husband Ravi (27), two brothers-in-law Sachin Kumar (24), Amit Kumar (20) and mother-in-law Rajani Devi (50) were injured, and admitted in Saifai medical college.

Speaking to TOI, a UPEIDA expressway patrolling team member on condition of anonymity said, “The accident occurred when the speeding blue colour Maruti Baleno hit carcass of nilgai, which was killed by another heavy vehicle earlier in the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday.”

Concurring to the fact, sub-inspector Jawhar Singh of Karhal police station, who reached to accident spot along with his team, said, “The mangled hatchback had turned turtle after colliding with the carcass. Since the local area has wide open fields, often animals jump over the iron railing to cross expressway.”

According to police, the victims were going Gursahaiganj to meet their relatives.

On Monday, four people from Delhi died and five others were injured after the car they were travelling in rammed a truck on Agra-Lucknow expressway.

Earlier too scores of accidents have been reported on 302km long expressway caused by stray animals including cattle, dog, peacock and other unwanted animals, which penetrate through broken fences and iron railing. On July 22, former CM Akhilesh Yadav even tweeted a couple of pictures of stray cattle on the expressway, raising concern over commuters safety.

To curb the road accidents, in May month the state cabinet approved Rs 29.6 crore funds to operate, maintain and provide safety on Agra-Lucknow Expressway for five years to a private firm. The firm had responsibility for setting up outdoor equipment like emergency call box, CCTV, PTZ cameras, ANPR-based speed informant system and automatic counter-cum-classifier. The cabinet also asked the Uttar Pradesh Expressways Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA) to ensure set up control centres at three places along the expressway, with speed measuring cameras and number plate readers.

Inaugurated on December 23, 2016, with toll services began from January 19, 2018, the Agra-Lucknow expressway reported 100 casualties in 853 accidents between August 1, 2017, to March 31, 2018. Another data voluntarily collected from 20 police stations, under whose jurisdiction the expressway limits fall, revealed that between June to July month, 25 casualties occurred on the expressway.