Chandigarh, 11 October, 2024: Two hit-and-run accidents within 24 hours in the Tricity region have resulted in the tragic deaths of an 11-month-old girl and a 52-year-old woman, both of whom were en route to temples during the ongoing Navratri festival.
In the first incident, 11-month-old Chandni was killed after a speeding vehicle struck her near Kheda Mandir in Mauli Jagran, Chandigarh, around 9:30 PM on Tuesday. Her father, Satpal, reported to the police that he was carrying his daughter while walking towards the temple when the vehicle, coming from the opposite direction, collided with him. The impact caused Chandni to fall onto the road, and she was subsequently crushed under the rear tire of a generator attached to the vehicle.
Satpal stated that the driver attempted to flee but was briefly stopped by bystanders. However, he managed to escape again. Satpal rushed his daughter to the Manimajra dispensary, where she was pronounced dead on arrival. He provided the police with the vehicle’s registration number, leading to the filing of an FIR under several sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) at the Mauli Jagran police station, and an investigation is ongoing.
In a separate incident on Wednesday evening, a 52-year-old woman named Suman Sachdeva was run over by a reversing vehicle near the Radha Soami Satsang Bhawan in Mankya, Panchkula. Sachdeva was attending a religious gathering with her family when a truck driver, reversing at high speed without warning, struck her and trapped her beneath the vehicle’s wheels.
Witness Sanjay Sharma, a resident of Tribune Friends Colony in Panchkula, stated that Sachdeva was near a parked truck when the accident occurred. She was immediately taken to the Sector 6 civil hospital for first aid and later referred to Alchemist Hospital in Sector 21, Panchkula, where she succumbed to her injuries later that evening. Sharma attributed the accident to the driver’s negligence, prompting police to file an FIR under BNS against the absconding driver and seize the vehicle involved.
Data from 2023 reveals that pedestrians accounted for 41.79% of road accident fatalities in Chandigarh, with 28 out of 67 deaths involving individuals on foot. This trend underscores the growing dangers pedestrians face on city roads, as illustrated by the 23 pedestrian fatalities in 2022.
