61-year-old man dead, 2 hurt as truck rams auto in north Delhi

NEWDELHI:A 61-year-old man was killed and two others injured when a municipality garbage dumper driven on the wrong side of the road rammed an auto-rickshaw near Ghanta Ghar in north Delhi early Thursday, police said.

The driver, 28-year-old Sanjeev Mandal, was caught on the spot and arrested. He was booked for causing death due to negligence and rash driving, said Nupur Prasad, deputy commissioner of police (north).

The officer said the driver was working for a firm outsourced by the North Delhi Municipal Council to collect and dump garbage. The north civic body officials said they were unaware of such a mishap.

The DCP identified the dead man as Munna, a resident of Malkaganj who worked at the Azadpur vegetable market.

The mishap happened around 4.30 am on Thursday while the ‘shared’ auto was negotiating a roundabout near Ghanta Ghar. Police said three men who work for a fruit business unit were travelling in the auto.

Munna boarded the auto in Malkaganj and sat on the front seat along with the driver, the officer said.

The driver, Gulab Rai, whose leg was fractured, said he could only remember his auto getting rammed by the truck bearing a Haryana registration number plate and ‘MCD’ written on it. “The truck was travelling against the traffic. I don’t remember more as I fell unconscious,” Rai said.

The auto-rickshaw was mangled. Munna came under a tyre of the truck, police said.

The other occupants were injured too but only a 17-year-old boy needed hospitalisation.

There were very few people near the spot at that hour but they managed to catch hold the truck driver and rushed the victims to a hospital where Munna was declared brought dead.

The mishap happened a day after Delhi Traffic Police data showed that 1,562 fatal road accidents were reported in the city in 2018.