Three men burnt alive as car hits truck in Panipat

KARNAL: Three people were burnt alive after a car they were travelling in caught fire after crashing into a truck near Istana village on the Panipat-rohtak highway, police said on Friday.

The deceased have been identified as Vikrant, 30, and Sugam Tyagi, 28, residents of Barana village in Panipat, and Pankaj Kumar, 26, of Jalalpur village in Panipat. Police said the deceased were private lab technicians and were going shopping for a ‘jagran’ at Vikrant’s residence.

According to police, the incident took place on Friday afternoon as the Cng-powered Hyundai i-20 car of the victims, going towards Rohtak, rammed into a moving truck that was entering a grain market.

An eyewitnesses said soon after the accident, the car caught fire and the victims did not get a chance to come out. The locals tried to control the flames but failed. Later, a fire tender reached and doused the fire but all three passengers were burnt to death.

Police said the charred bodies were sent to Panipat civil hospital for postmortem. Panipat ASP Pooja Vashishth also reached the spot to enquire about the incident. Israna police station in-charge Deepak Kumar said families of the victims have been informed. He said on complaint of the families, an FIR has been registered against the unknown truck driver.

12 injured in bus-truck collision in Phagwara PHAGWARA : Twelve people including five women were injured when a Punjab Roadways bus they were travelling in collided with a truck near Rehana Jattan in Phagwara on Friday, police said.

The injured included drivers of both the bus and the truck which fell into a roadside seasonal canal following the collision, Rawalpindi police station SHO Hardev Preet Singh said.

All the injured were rushed to the Phagwara civil hospital, he added.

The accident took place as the bus driver tried to overtake the truck, the SHO said.