Meerut: Three days on, divers find capsized car, three bodies

The vehicle was fished out using a large crane and the three bloated bodies were recovered from inside the metal structure. The deceased were identified as Honey Saitia (34), Harnek Singh (28) and Vivek Verma (33). While Saitia and Singh were residents of  Delhi’s Jehangirpuri, Vivek had been living in Jawahar Nagar Colony, Loni, the police said.

The divers from Muradnagar were hired by the family members Wednesday after the PAC and NDRF teams failed to trace the embedded wreckage and its occupants after searching the canal over nearly two days. The Muradnagar trio, who used a huge magnet, traced the submerged vehicle and also confirmed that three bodies were trapped inside it during a search operation that lasted nearly seven hours.

Family members of the three businessmen contacted the Meerut police Tuesday morning as they were missing after leaving home late Saturday night. The family members saw news reports in a section of local media that a Brezza car had capsized in the Gangnehar on alternate Kanwar Yatra route around 3:45 am Sunday. The missing three had also left their homes in a Brezza car.

“The police control room in Meerut received a message around 4 am Sunday that one such car fell into Gangnehar after smashing the protection wall. We sent a police team to the spot. Some broken parts of the vehicle were found but we could not trace the location of the car,” said Sardhana Deputy SP Pankaj Kumar Singh.

Their family members told the police that Vivek Verma and Honey Saitia were partners in a soap factory in New Dehli while Harnek Singh owned a chemical processing plant at the same site. The police said Honey and Harnek have told their family members before leaving the place Saturday night that a fire has taken place in their units while Vivek said he was going to Hardwar with his friends. All three are survived by their wives and a son each, police said.

“The bodies were sent for postmortem,” said Singh.