In an appalling hit-and-run accident, a car crashed into a scooter at one of the key intersections of central Delhi — where Tolstoy Marg meets Kasturba Gandhi Marg — and the body of one two-wheeler rider landed on the car roof, but the car driver did not stop. The body of the badly injured rider stayed on the car roof for about 3km as the driver continued speeding. Video footage of the shocking accident on Saturday night, recorded by an eyewitness, has emerged today.
The car, an SUV-class vehicle, rammed into the scooter with such force that one rider was thrown to the ground several feet away, and the other rider was flung on to the roof of the vehicle from the impact of the crash. The car driver did not stop or even slow down for a second, but simply sped away, with one victim — possibly alive but grievously injured at the time — still on the roof. If anything, the driver increased his speed.
After speeding for about 3km like this, the car driver stopped very briefly near Delhi Gate, threw the victim down from the roof, and fled. The victim, a 30-year-old jewellery store owner named Deepanshu Verma, never had a chance of getting any treatment and his life just slipped away. His fellow rider, his 20-year-old cousin Mukul, was in critical condition.
The video of the car speeding away was filmed by Mohammad Bilal, the eyewitness. He went after the fleeing SUV driver on his scooter and tried to film the scene at the same time. Though he did his best to make the car stop by shouting at the driver and blowing his scooter horn, the car continued speeding.
The eyewitness video has helped the police track down the vehicle, and identify and arrest the driver. A case of murder has been registered.
The suspect is named Harneet Singh Chawla, and initial reports indicate that he caused the accident and left the injured man to die even as his family members rode the car with him.
The video footage was first published on NDTV, which interviewed the victim’s sister. NDTV quoted the sister, Unnati, as saying that she had learnt from eyewitness accounts that her brother suffered a head injury when he thrown down from the car roof, and that head injury possibly killed him. “It was all intentional,” she said, adding that she felt the driver was drunk and should be severely punished.