A 29-year-old man in Hyderabad died in a road accident, after the car he was travelling in hit a signal post. Police said that the accident occurred due to speeding and that the man driving the car was in a drunken state. The deceased, Sandeep Reddy, a software employee, was a passenger seated in the back seat of the car. He was travelling with two others from Champapet to Turkayamjal, when the accident happened at the BN Reddy colony signal post, according to Vanasthalipuram police.
According to the police, the man driving the car, Gautam, lost control over the vehicle while speeding, and hit the signal post. While 30-year-old Gautam is a private employee, the third person in the car is a constable in the OCTOPUS, the anti-terrorist force of the Telangana state police. A case has been registered at the Vanasthalipuram police station, and the accused Gautam is now in police custody, according to reports.
Earlier in November, a man and a woman suffered critical injuries when their Mercedes Benz car crashed into a parked vehicle in Banjara Hills. The car, which had four persons, was found overspeeding, police said. Drunken driving was suspected as the cause of the accident, with the persons seated in front surviving the crash because of airbags.
A few days earlier, a man named Gautham, a manager at the Secunderabad Club, was killed in an accident at Madhapur, when a man driving a Mercedes car broke a traffic signal and hit Gautham's bike. After the incident, Cyberabad Police Commissioner VC Sajjanar had warned of strict legal action against pub managements that allow their customers to drive in a drunken condition.
The Commissioner also said that in cases of drunken driving leading to fatalities, offenders will be prosecuted under section 304 (II) (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the IPC (Indian Penal Code), for which the punishment involves imprisonment upto 10 years.