Off-duty Ola cab hits ambulance, one dead
NEWDELHI:A 45-year-old patient, being transported in an ambulance, was killed on Tuesday morning when an allegedly speeding off-duty Ola cab rammed the emergency vehicle near Delhi Gate in the early hours of Tuesday, police said.
However, the driver of the Hyundai Eon car did not try to escape from the spot.
He was arrested and booked for causing death by negligence and rash driving. The driver was identified as Mahfooz Alam, a resident of Zakir Nagar in south Delhi’s Okhla.
Manjeet Singh Randhawa, deputy commissioner of police (central), said Alam uses the car as a cab attached with Ola, but was off duty and returning home after work when the accident happened. He was found waiting at the accident spot and was taken into custody.
The man killed in the accident has been identified as Maha Singh, a resident of Sonepat in Haryana. Singh, a heart patient, often had to visit GB Pant Hospital in central Delhi for treatment.
Around 1am on Tuesday, he experienced sudden severe pain in his heart, forcing his family to hire an ambulance and rush him to Delhi. The accident happened around 3.30am near Delhi Gate.
“The ambulance was taking a right turn at a traffic signal, a few hundred metres before the hospital, when a car suddenly hit the middle of the emergency vehicle,” said Singh’s nephew Naresh.
Naresh, who was in the ambulance at the time of the accident, said that his uncle was on oxygen support . The impact of the hit was such that the ambulance overturned and the oxygen pipe detached. He was, however, unsure how the accident happened as “it was dark ”.
An investigator, however, said that an “error of judgement” on the part of the drivers of the ambulance as well as the car could have resulted in the mishap.