AGRA: Eight persons including two Delhi residents were killed and seven others were injured in three separate road accidents that occurred within a span of seven hours on the Yamuna Expressway in Mathura’s Surir area and Agra-Lucknow Expressway in Etawah on the first day of 2021 on Friday.
The first mishap occurred around 1:30 am near milestone 85 on Yamuna Expressway, claiming the lives of Kapil Deo (25), a supervisor in a private company in Delhi and Mohammad Afzal (28) a tailor, who were travelling in a car along with others. The driver, Niranjan Kumar, and another passenger, Suman Prasad, were injured, when their car rammed into an unidentified vehicle due to dense fog. They were heading to Agra from Noida, said police.
The other accident on the Delhi- Agra stretch took place near milestone 92, when three bike-borne youths were mowed down by an unidentified vehicle around 7 am. The deceased were identified as Vishal Gupta, and Kuldeep hailing from Mainpuri and Karanveer from Agra. They were in the age group of 25-30 years. “The bodies of the deceased have been sent for post mortem and further legal action will be taken,” said Mathura SP (rural) Shireesh Chandra.
Later, around 8 vehicles piled up on Agra-Lucknow Expressway in which three persons were killed and five others were injured. The deceased were identified as Rohit (24) from Haryana’s Mahendragarh and Hiralal and Doluram from Rajasthan’s Dausa district. Injured were rushed to Saifai medical college for treatment.
Station house officer of Usrahar police station in Etawah, Gagan Gaur, told TOI that the mishap took place around 8.30am near milestone 132 on expressway, when a transportation vehicle rammed into the truck which was taking an illegal “U” turn on highway, leading to a multi-vehicle pile-up.
“The truck was possibly not visible to the driver of the transportation vehicle due to dense fog,” he said, adding that the bodies have been sent for post mortem.
According to Yamuna Expressway authorities, last year 509 accidents took place on the highway, claiming 121 lives. This figure was lesser than the previous year mishaps and this decline could be attributed to lower volumes of traffic due to restrictions on movements because of Covid pandemic and the lockdowns. In 2019, 560 accidents took 195 lives.