Audi driver who hit man returned to look for CCTV cameras
NEWDELHI: The south Delhi property dealer who had hit a 25-yearold juice seller in central Delhi on Saturday night returned to the scene of crime the following morning to check if there were any CCTV cameras, police said.
Police arrested the driver Rajeev Malhotra on Monday evening after interrogating him for about 4-5 hours. Malhotra managed to get bail on Tuesday. He has been booked under section of causing death due to negligence and rash driving.
On Saturday night, juice seller Manoj Yadav was impaled after he was allegedly hit by a speeding car in central Delhi’s ITO. Manoj was flung in the air on impact and landed on the grills of a road divider which pierced his chest.
A police officer said investigations revealed that the driver Rajeev Malhotra, a GK 1 resident, returned to work on Sunday morning in another car.
While driving to his office at Ansari road in Daryaganj, he reportedly stopped at the spot pretending to be a curious onlooker who wanted to see the ‘bloody spot’ where a man had died the night before, an officer said.
Malhotra reportedly told police that a few hours before the accident he drank alcohol with his friend. He said he was returning home and driving at a high speed when he hit Manoj. But medical examination did not reveal the presence of liquor in his blood because Malhotra was arrested more than 24 hours after the accident. He had sped off from the spot, cleaned his car and dropped it at a friend’s house in Noida. Police have recovered the Audi car. Malhotra was identified after the police team scanned CCTV footages from at least 20 different routes near the accident spot. Seven police teams were tracing the CCTV cameras at different routes around Central Delhi.
The victim Manoj Yadav was among the thousands of homeless men who live on the Delhi streets.
He slept on the roof of a roadside juice shop in central Delhi, where he worked, more than 1,200 kilometres away from his family in Supaul, Bihar.
On Saturday night, Manoj had left his shop outside the Doll museum in ITO, and was crossing the Bahadur Shah Zafar (BSZ) Marg in ITO to share dinner with homeless rickshawpullers who were sleeping on the central verge of the road, when a speeding white Audi car hit him. Manoj was flung at least 10-15 feet in the air and landed on an iron grill median — the rods impaling his chest and killing him on the spot.
It took police and locals at least half an hour to remove his body from the grill.
Manoj’s body was taken to his home town in Bihar by his younger brother and friends.