Nuh crash: Footage shows couple's car was hit twice

Footage from the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway has revealed that the car in which a Delhi couple died on Tuesday night was struck not once but twice, with both errant vehicles speeding away without stopping to help even as the victims lay trapped, likely still alive and bleeding, inside the mangled car for nearly eight hours near Nuh.

- Debashish Karmakar

Footage from the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway has revealed that the car in which a Delhi couple died on Tuesday night was struck not once but twice, with both errant vehicles speeding away without stopping to help - even as the victims lay trapped, likely still alive and bleeding, inside the mangled car for nearly eight hours near Nuh.

The first hit came from a multiaxle dumper truck that shoved their Wagon-R into the side lane; the second, 22 minutes later, from a speeding Maruti Ertiga whose driver reversed and fled, said investigators who have reviewed the CCTV footage. Neither driver got out to check on the couple, who appeared to have survived the initial collision.

But for the family of 42-yearold Lachhi Ram and 38-year-old Kusum Lata, the real horror was what happened after. For nearly eight hours, the mangled car sat on the side of the carriageway, its doors jammed shut, its occupants bleeding inside, as hundreds of vehicles passed.

"How can a mangled car with two dying people lie on a major expressway all night and no one sees it?" the family asked in Rajasthan's Karauli district, accusing highway agencies and local police of a complete breakdown in response.

"How could everyone miss an entire mangled car with two persons trapped and bleeding inside.