An eight-year-old girl died and her mother and elder sister were injured in Hyderabad, after a speeding truck hit the two-wheeler that the trio were riding on. The accident happened at the Chilkanagar main road in the city.
The incident took place around 8:30 am, when Shobha Rani was taking her two daughters to school. All three of them fell on the road, following which passers-by took them to a nearby hospital.
According to reports, the child’s head came between the road and the truck’s tire, which killed her on the spot. Bhumika Reddy, who was studying in Class 3, was declared dead on arrival. The mother and the elder daughter are undergoing treatment at the hospital.
PTI reported that the police detained the truck driver, after a case of causing death due to negligence was booked against him. Reacting to reports that potholes on the road caused the accident, Hyderabad municipal commissioner B Janardhan Reddy said the road was "perfectly motorable", the PTI report adds.
Ironically, the victim's uncle is an active campaigner for road safety in the city.
“The accident spot was about a kilometre away from my sister’s apartment near Asian cinema hall. Though road at the accident spot was carpeted, the stretch from Chilakanagar to the accident spot is in a horrible condition. We think that after the slow ride on the pothole-ridden stretch, the truck driver might have accelerated after reaching a well carpeted road and rammed the scooter when my sister slowed down,” Shobha Rani’s brother D Ramu, a road safety activist, told the Times of India.
The ToI report adds that a case was registered under sections 304-A (Causing death by negligence) and 337 (Causing hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
According to data released by the Hyderabad Traffic Police, 1,948 accidents have been reported in the city as of October this year. While 1,938 people were injured in these accidents, 259 people have died.
Two-wheelers were the biggest victims of these accidents, constituting 49% of the total accidents until October, 2017.