New Delhi: Four people sleeping on a road divider were killed and two others injured after they were run over by a speeding truck in the early hours of Wednesday in northeast Delhi's Seemapuri area, police said.
They said the driver of the offending vehicle was arrested from Shamli district in Uttar Pradesh.
CCTV footage, which recorded the incident at 1:51 am, showed a truck crossing a DTC depot traffic signal and mowing down people sleeping on the road divider while heading towards the DLF T-point.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Shahdara) R Sathiyasundaram said the truck driver was driving rashly and negligently.
According to police, two persons died on the spot and four others were rushed to GTB Hospital in injured condition.
Of the four, one was declared brought dead and another died during treatment, the DCP said.
A case has been registered under Indian Penal Code sections 279 (rash driving or riding on a public way), 304A (causing death by negligence), and 337 (causing hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others) against the accused driver, police said.
"We checked the footage of several CCTVs and identified the offending vehicle. Driver Sidhir Kumar (36), a resident of Kapashera, has been arrested from Shamli after analyzing the CCTV cameras. The Vehicle has also been seized," Sathiyasundaram said.
The CCTV footage, which has gone viral, also showed the truck hitting an electricity pole causing the street light to go off, after running over the people.
The four dead were identified as Kareem (52), Chotte Khan (25), Shah Alam (38), all residents of New Seemapuri, and Rahul (45), a resident of Shalimar Garden in Uttar Pradesh's Sahibabad, police said.
The injured have been identified as Manish (16) from Sahibabad and Pradeep (30), a resident of Tahirpur, they said.
Sources said the truck was coming from the Shahdara flyover side and took a left turn at the Apsara border. It later reached near Seemapuri depot after crossing the Seemapuri roundabout.
The driver was going to fill the gas tank and he was scheduled to go to Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh to unload some items from the truck, the sources said.
Manish, a resident of Harsh Vihar in Sahibabad, who received injuries in his hand recounted the incident.
"I came here (near the incident site) around 8 pm last night to sell scrap items. It took some time and after having dinner, I slept on the divider. The vehicle first ran over my hand and I fell on another side of the divider," he said.
"It then ran over the other people sleeping on the divider, hit a pole, and sped away," Manish said. He was discharged from the hospital after treatment.
On September 16, Delhi Police Commissioner Sanjay Arora launched the Delhi Road Crash Report 2021. This was the first time that the Delhi Traffic Police had replaced the word 'accident' with 'crash' in this annual report, formerly titled 'Road Accidents in Delhi', a statement said.
The change is on the basis that 'crashes' are events that can be prevented, and are open to rational analysis and remedial action, while 'accidents' suggest that they are inevitable, it said.
According to the report, the crash classification during day and night showed that in 2021, 561 fatal crashes occurred during the day and 645 during the night, despite fewer vehicles at night.
In 2020, there were 551 fatal crashes during the daytime and 612 during the night-time, it said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)