Three students killed, four injured as car falls off flyover in Punjabi Bagh

DCP (west) Vijay Kumar said, “All the seven occupants of the car are students of Delhi School of Professional Studies and Research (DSPSR) in Rohini Sector 25 and were going to Narela to sit for their second semester examination. They all left from Rajat’s house in east Punjabi Bagh.”

Police said prima facie the cause of death is due to internal bleeding and blood clot in the brains. All victims had crushed facial bones and severe head injuries, police said.

Witnesses told police that as the vehicle sped toward Azadpur, the driver suddenly lost control. The car rammed into the flyover railing, which broke. The car then turned turtle and crashed down near the railway tracks under the flyover, they added.

Aashik, a resident of the nearby Cement Siding Shakurpur Jhuggi area, said there was a blast-like sound. “Alarmed, we rushed towards the flyover and saw the car falling. Within seconds, we saw the mangled remains of the car under the flyover,” he said. Aashik said they suddenly saw one of the occupants of the car outside. “Perhaps he had fallen off the car. His teeth was broken and he had injuries on his face. However, he could walk. He gave his phone to a passerby and asked him to call up his father,” Aashik said.

A PCR call was promptly made. But before the PCR van could arrive, bystanders had already started breaking the windows of the car as the doors were jammed. “When we brought them out of the car, all of them were breathing,” Aashik added.

Sumit Kumar, who also lives in the area, said, “Many people had gathered. While many of them were just taking videos, one of them came all the way down through the slope and took one of the victims to the PCR van. He, however, added that two of the three deceased — Sanchit and Ritu — had died before they could help. Half-an-hour after the accident, Kumar said, a train which was passing by stopped to help but ambulances had arrived by then.

Had the car fallen a few metres ahead then there was a possibility of all of them getting electrocuted as high voltage wires run overhead the railway line nearby, Kumar said. ‘Our child is not gone, she’ll be resurrected’

Later in the day, as the families of the victims tried to attune themselves to the tragedy, Malkhan Singh, father of one of the deceased, Ritu, stood at the mortuary of the Sanjay Gandhi Hospital, holding an eye donation letter close to him. He recalled the last time he spoke to his daughter — before going to bed, last night. Ritu had stayed up all night, preparing for the Organisational Behaviour examination.

“I told her to sleep, but she insisted on studying. She left early in the morning and I could not even see her alive one last time,” said Singh. But the family has one last way to get solace — by donating Ritu’s eyes. “Our child has not gone, she has been resurrected. Someone else will see with her eyes now,” a relative said, as Singh signed the letter giving his permission for the donation. “The doctor in charge of the transplant has told us they would inform us the day they perform the operation with her eyes,” the relative added.

Taking cue from Ritu’s parents, Sanchit’s father Raj Kumar, said that he too has signed a letter, agreeing to donate his son’s eyes.