gurgaon

Updated: Dec 26, 2015 16:03 IST

A scooterist run over by a heavy vehicle on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway on Friday afternoon was near-instantaneously mangled into six or seven pieces by others following it. The tragedy turned even more ghastly as passing cars slowed down only enough for their occupants to take pictures of the gory scene with nobody intervening for a full quarter of an hour.

In the end, it took a humane — and brave — auto-rickshaw driver to cordon off the remains of the victim and prevent their further mutilation. The remains of the victim were so badly mangled that his identification as 24-year-old Aakash Singh from Raghubir Nagar in Delhi was possible later only by means of the scooter’s number plates.

Since there are no eye-witnesses to the incident yet, the police have based their initial conclusions on their experience with road accidents, something that NH8 provides a steady supply of. The police are also keeping their fingers crossed that the surveillance cameras in whose field this happened will be able to provide actionable footage.

The accident happened at around 3.20pm when an unknown vehicle hit Aakash’s Activa scooter from behind and crushed him even as he lost balance and fell on the road. Some policemen stationed a little further down the highway reported seeing a “few trucks going at great speed” in the direction of Jaipur, making them possible participants in the accident.

“The mishap happened when the deceased, a resident of Raghubir Nagar, Delhi, had come to Gurgaon on a business meeting. His scooter was hit by a truck, and apparently a number of heavy vehicles plying on the flyover crushed him. The youth’s body parts remained scattered over an area of 50 metres,” said inspector Ashok Kumar, the SHO of Sector 29 police station.

In the meantime, the remains of the youth were being captured for posterity on cellphones of car owners till this was stopped by an auto-rickshaw driver. This man, who did not leave any contact information, told the police that he positioned his auto-rickshaw at the accident spot in a manner that traffic was forced to take a diversion.

An ambulance driver who reached the spot said that commuters remained indifferent to the plight of the victim.

“The scooter of the victim was damaged badly, and he must have breathed for barely a minute after getting hit. The body was cut into six to seven pieces, and it was a gory sight,” he said on condition of anonymity.

The family of the deceased was called by the police later after identification. The father works in a fashion retail shop in Delhi. He told the police that Singh had started at 2pm from his home, and was on his way to Sadar Bazar in Gurgaon for taking orders.

An FIR has been registered against unknown drivers for rash driving. The body of the deceased will be handed over to the family on Saturday after a post-mortem examination.

Two-wheelers are not allowed on the expressway but lack of both monitoring and enforcement has meant rampant violation of this rule.