Twelve members of a family were on their way to Nainital for a two-day vacation when the vehicle they were travelling in hit a private tanker on Friday night, killing the driver and two members on Delhi-Meerut Expressway near East Delhi’s Kalyanpuri.
The Jain family — Premwati (63), her son Sudershan (44), his wife Kumud (38), their children Sonu (10), Monu (13) and Sneha (15), Sudershan’s sister Poonam (36), her husband Mukesh (39), their children Lovish (14) and Khusboo (17), and Sudershan’s cousins Priyanka (21) and Anurag (16) — had left their house in Uttam Nagar with the hired driver Nishan Singh (34), a resident of Tilak Nagar, around 10.30 p.m.
When they reached NH-24, their mini-bus hit a tanker from behind. The impact was such that the front portion of the vehicle got completely damaged. Nishan, Mukesh, and Monu were killed while the other 10 sustained severe injuries in the incident.
Local rushed to help
Over 100 police personnel reached the spot after a PCR call was made about the accident around 12 a.m. A police officer said that it took nearly one-and-a-half-hour to pull the driver out of the vehicle. “As a routine patrol was being conducted on Friday night, most of the policemen deployed in the district had reached the spot within minutes. Locals, however, had managed to pull all the 12 family members out of the vehicle by then. The driver, who was stuck between the seat and the steering wheel, had to be pulled out slowly,” the officer said.
All the injured people were rushed to different hospitals, including Lal Bahadur Shastri and MAX, where Nishan Singh, Mukesh and Monu succumbed to injuries, said DCP (East) Jasmeet Singh, adding that two-three of them are still critical.
The family said that they had planned the trip about five days ago, as the children in the family wanted to go on one. “Ms. Poonam’s children had asked Mr. Sudershan to take them on a trip. They had booked the mini-bus from a private travel house two days ago. They had left for Nainital on Friday night and had planned to return on Monday morning,” said Mr. Sudershan’s paternal uncle, Vimal Jain.
The Jains are in the business of property dealing and have been staying as a joint family in Uttam Nagar for the last 35 years, Mr. Vimal said.
Nishan’s family said that he was a divorcee and is survived by his five-year-old son who studies at a private school in Tilak Nagar. “On Friday morning, he had returned from Manali, but did not come home and instead went to Gurdwara Damdama Sahib and slept there. In the evening, he had gone to meet our sister in Jor Bagh, after which he went to Uttam Nagar to pick them [the Jains] up,” said his younger brother Manjeet Singh.
Mr. Manjeet also claimed that Nishan had been a driver for the last five years and was working with a private travel house for last one year. “He did not drink and had never met with an accident. We are wondering what happened,” the brother said.
DCP Singh also said that a case on charges of rash driving and causing death by negligence has been registered and the driver of the water tanker has been arrested. “The driver, Santosh Yadav (34), a resident of Mandawali, who had fled the spot, has been arrested. He said that the tanker was moving slowly due to a faulty clutch and that the mini-bus hit the vehicle from behind. The actual cause of the accident will, however, only become clear after further investigation,” Mr. Singh said.
