Deputy secretary in the department of economic Affairs, Navjot Singh (52), a resident of Hari Nagar, was killed in the accident. A Sunday afternoon drive back home from Delhi’s Bangla Sahib Gurdwara turned into a nightmare for 56-year-old Navjot Singh, deputy secretary in the economic affairs department of the finance ministry, and his wife, Sandeep Kaur.
Their journey ended tragically on Delhi’s Ring Road when their motorcycle was hit by a speeding BMW, leaving Singh dead and his wife critically injured. The woman, who was allegedly driving the luxury car, and her husband were also injured in the incident.
The accident took place between 1.30 pm and 2 pm on Sunday near Dhaula Kuan when the luxury car, driven by a woman, rammed into the couple’s two-wheeler before veering into a divider and overturning.The force of the collision was so violent that the couple was thrown off the bike and came under the path of a moving bus on their right.
The police said that three calls were made to the control room. “Staff reached the spot and found one BMW car turned sideways on the road and one motorcycle near the divider of the road near the Metro Pillar no. 67,” the police added.
The woman driver, Gagan Preet Makkad, and her husband, Parikshit Makkar, then hailed a taxi and took the injured persons to a hospital, where the 52-year-old succumbed to his injuries.
Videos shared on social media showed the couple lying on the road near the metro pillar. The luxury car was also seen lying sideways on the road with a motorcycle parked nearby.
On Monday, the woman driver was arrested after she was discharged from the hospital. She has been charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder, obstruction of evidence, rash driving, and endangering lives.
The family of the deceased has alleged that the couple took Navjot Singh and Sandeep Kaur to a hospital far away.
Kaur has alleged that the woman deliberately took them to a small hospital far away and while on the stretcher, she had again asked the woman to take them to a better hospital.
“I kept telling the woman who was in the van with us to take us to a nearby hospital, but she did not,” police quoted Kaur as saying in the first information report (FIR). She added that her husband was unconscious and needed immediate treatment, and could have been saved if he had been treated in time.
According to a police official aware of the matter, the accused’s father is known to one of the three owners of the hospital where the victims were taken.
Van driver Mohammad Gulfam, who had rushed all four injured people to the hospital also claimed that the accused woman insisted that all the victims be taken to a hospital nearly 22 kilometres away.
“Many bystanders were recording videos of the accident site immediately after it happened, but did not help. I was driving a loading vehicle, stopped and rushed the injured to a hospital in Azadpur after the man and the woman in the car asked me to take them there,” Gulfam said.
