india

Updated: Jun 27, 2019 07:21 IST

A man driving an SUV ran over three children sleeping on a footpath in Patna and was allegedly lynched by a mob when he tried to escape, the police and residents said on Wednesday. The police, however, added that a section of local residents said Saurav Ganguly, 30 , died after his vehicle hit an electric pole.

“We are investigating the incident...The SUV was badly damaged in the accident,” Baliram Choudhary, additional superintendent of police (Patna City), said.

Manish Kumar, who was in the vehicle with Ganguly, was in a critical condition. He too was allegedly beaten up by the mob.

Ganguly was a resident of Nawada’s Ishwar village, and the vehicle was registered in Nawada. The police were probing if Ganguly was the owner of the SUV and if he was drunk at the time of the incident that took place in the Agamkuan area around 2am on Wednesday.

Eyewitnesses said the speeding SUV damaged an electric pole and a shop. “After the incident, the driver tried to escape but the locals chased and caught him. There were two persons in the SUV at the time of the accident,” eyewitness Subodh Jha said.

The police said Rohit Kumar, Harendra Kumar and Raju Manjhi — all between 11 and 13 years — were killed in the incident. Eleven-year-old Lalit Manjhi suffered injuries and was undergoing treatment at a private hospital.

CCTV footages in the possession of the police suggested that the three children had actually slipped on to the road from the footpath in their sleep, according to police officials who did not want to be named.

The bodies of the three children and Ganguly were sent for autopsy. After the incident, protesters blocked key roads and staged a demonstration from 3.30 am till 6.30am, demanding compensation for the families of the children and disrupting traffic movement on a highway.