BHOPAL/Jabalpur: A Madhya Pradesh Warehousing and Logistic Corporation (MPWLC) branch manager was killed after an unidentified vehicle hit his car on Lalitpur-Sagar national highway on Saturday.

Santosh Singh Tomar was killed as he was returning from Gwalior after attending funeral of his colleague Surendra Shakya, the whistleblower in a multi-crore paddy scam who found dead in Jabalpur on Wednesday.

Police in Uttar Pradesh Lalitpur district said the accident took place between 4am and 5am near Birdhi police post.

"They were hit by an unknown vehicle which could not be traced. While Tomar died on the spot, his driver succumbed to injuries at the hospital later," said Birdi police outpost sub-inspector Ram Prakash.

"The driver was taken to hospital by our highway patrol staff. He died before his statement could be recorded. There were no eye-witnesses," he said.

Shakya, who was an MPWLC general manager as well, was found dead at his house in Jabalpur months after he highlighted the scam.

He allegedly committed suicide after MPWLC tried to make him a co-accused in the scam, which a Special Investigation Team (SIT) is probing. The SIT has stepped up its probe after Tomar's death.

Shakya had joined MPWLC's Shahpura branch on July 1, 2014 and lodged a police complaint eight months later alleging 53,000 sacks of paddy were missing from his warehouse.

He has accused six people, including IAS officer Chandrahas Dubey and MPWLC's regional manager O P Kushwaha, of abetting his suicide in his two-page suicide note.

Police remained tight-lipped on contents of the suicide note but sources said Shakya wrote his superiors and rice millers were harassing him for exposing the scam.

Opposition Congress has said the two deaths should be investigated to clear doubts. "I had raised the matter of paddy scam in the assembly. It is a big scam involving bureaucrats, politicians, rice mill owners and warehouse operators," said Congress MLA Nilesh Awasthi.

He said the scam investigations should be handed over to the CBI as it involved influential people.