A man was burnt alive inside a Honda City car and his co-passenger was injured after they met with an accident off the Jhajjar-Farukhnagar state highway near the Kundali-Manesar-Palwal Expressway on Thursday evening, the police said.

According to the police, the speeding sedan lost control, crashed into the culvert and slipped off the road. The impact of the accident was as such that the car rolled on the road several times before coming to a halt. Soon after, the vehicle caught fire, the police said.

“It appears that the victims were injured in the accident and the driver probably fell unconscious or could not pull himself out of the car, which was severely mangled. The fire engulfed the entire car in minutes and he was charred to death,” said Mukesh Kumar, station house officer of the Farukhnagar police station.

The police was trying to identify the deceased at the time of filing this report.

The injured person, identified as 34-year-old Niranjan Lamba, a resident of Sarai Alawardi, is a farmer. He was taken to a private hospital and later was referred to another hospital in Delhi. The police said Lamba was unfit to record his statement. An eyewitness told the police that Lamba had a miraculous escape as he managed to step out of the car after the crash.

“We rushed to the spot after a call from police at around 5:45 pm. Prima facie, it seems that the car caught fire due to a spark in the petrol tank. The deceased was charred to death and we recovered a skeleton from inside the vehicle after the fire was doused,” a fire official said.

The police said a team of forensic experts will collect samples from the spot to find out the exact reason behind the accident.

The police received a call at 5:45pm and two teams from Farukhnagar went to the spot. The teams called the fire department and tried to douse the fire with help from passersby, but could not save the driver.

One of the eyewitnesses, Vivek Sain, a resident of Gurugram, said, “Before people could do anything car was engulfed in fire and only one person managed to come out while another was charred to death.”

“The battery of the car was found 60 feet away from the car while one of the wheels was found at a distance of 100 metres from the car. We could not ascertain whether the car was being driven on the wrong side or how the accident happened,” Kumar said.

First Published: Oct 19, 2018 11:42 IST