Sunday, February 5, 2012

Six die in Calcutta as truck smashes SUV

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120205/jsp/bengal/story_15094131.jsp

Six die in Calcutta as truck smashes SUV

Feb. 4: Four members of a Murshidabad family on their way to Howrah station, their driver and a man sleeping on a pavement were killed when a truck hit their SUV and pushed it onto a footpath in Calcutta before toppling over it.

Police said both the Sumo, whose occupants were going to receive a relative returning from Saudi Arabia via Delhi, and the truck were travelling at very high speeds.

"The truck carrying incense sticks was hurtling down Rabindra Sarani while the Sumo was speeding along Mahatma Gandhi Road. At the intersection, the truck hit the car from the left and pushed it onto the pavement before toppling over it around 4am. A pavement dweller was crushed under the Sumo, which was badly mangled," an officer of Burrabazar police station said.

"A signal post was uprooted under the impact of the accident. The driver and the helper of the lorry fled," he added.

Those killed have been identified as Tauhida Khatoon, 16, her sister-in-law Nargis Bibi, 30, brother-in-law Abdar Sheikh, 38, cousin Amod Ali Sheikh, 36, and driver Noor Mohammad, 27. Nargis's 12-year-old son Bullet Sheikh was left nursing a fractured collar bone. Tauhida's brother Tohirul Sheikh, 14, suffered a head injury and is in a coma

Tohirul and Bullet have been admitted to Calcutta Medical College Hospital. The victims belonged to a family of farmers.

In Murshidabad's Khargram, from where the family had started off around 9 last night, Tauhida and Tohirul's mother Meherunnisa has been slipping in and out of consciousness since coming to know about the accident.

Her husband Furkan Sheikh, a marginal farmer, said: "My world has crumbled. We were so happy that our son Shajuddin was returning from Saudi Arabia after four years. That is why so many of our family members were going to receive him. They had also planned to visit some places in Calcutta before returning home."

Shajuddin, who works as a security guard in Saudi Arabia, called up home after he failed to find anybody to receive him. "But his relatives did not tell him about the tragedy. He left on his own for Murshidabad," the police officer said, adding that Shajuddin had come to Calcutta on the Kalka Mail.

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