"When Big Cars Hit...": Noida Family Waits For Justice In Audi Hit-And-Run

The son of the 63-year-old man, who died after being hit by a speeding Audi in Noida's Sector 53, has accused the police of going slow in its investigation and said it is the family which arranged the chilling CCTV footage of the accident.

Janak Dev Shah was hit by the speeding luxury car yesterday when he had stepped out to get milk from the nearby depot. His son Sandip told NDTV that he came to know about the accident around 6 am. "I was leaving for a walk when my neighbour came and told me that my father had an accident. I rushed to the spot. By then, a PCR van had taken my father to the hospital. We went to Manas Hospital in Sector 34. And we were informed that he was no more," he said.

Sandip Shah said that when they went to the cops to register a complaint, they were told to get the autopsy done first. "The FIR was registered when the autopsy report came," he said.

Manish Mishra, Additional DCP, Noida Police, has said police are scanning the CCTV footage. The car and its driver are yet to be traced.

Asked if the cops arranged the CCTV footage that captures the luxury car hitting the elderly man, he said, "No, we arranged it ourselves. We got no support from the police and the administration. If they backed us, the culprit would have been arrested by now."

"We have lost the head of our family, so you can understand what is our mental condition now. The administration should help us."

Sandip said his father used to work with the All India Radio and had retired three years back.

A neighbour alleged that when the family reached the local police station and asked for an update on the case, a cop replied that "police have a lot of work, your case is not the only one. We are pushing them to probe different angles. Are we the police?"

"When big cars hit people, no action is taken. If it was a common man, he would be picked up. We are showing them it is an Audi, they are insisting on referring to it as a 'white car'. Every person has a right to justice," he said, adding that all neighbours are with the family.

The family said that Mr Shah would to the nearby Mother Dairy depot to get milk every morning. Sometimes, he would also take his grandson along. But on Sunday, he went alone.

Gita Vaishnav, Mr Shah's neighbour and an eyewitness, said the elderly man greeted her that morning, minutes before the accident. "The car was moving in a zigzag manner. Before I could alert him, the car hit him. He was thrown 10 feet in the air, he hit the car and then fell on the ground hard," she said.

The Noida hit-and-run horror comes shortly after the Pune incident, in which a 17-year-old's late-night dash in a Porsche left two 24-year-old engineers dead. The incidents have sparked a conversation on how road safety rules are being flouted and how power and influence being used to shield the guilty.

In Noida, earlier this month, two people were killed after a BMW with a minor behind the wheel hit an e-rickshaw.

According to the report of the National Crime Records Bureau on accidental deaths and suicides in India, a total of 4,46,768 road accidents were reported in 2022. These left 1,71,100 deaths and over 4.23 lakh people injured. About 62 per cent of these accidents were caused due to overspeeding and claimed over 1 lakh lives.