Man steps out of car to check toll glitch, dragged under truck

{ KHERKI DAULA TOLL PLAZA } SHOCKING ACCIDENT

- Debashish Karmakar

A 45-year-old man, on his way to drop a friend at the airport, was crushed to death and dragged for nearly 200 metres under a dumper truck at the Kherki Daula toll plaza on the Delhi-Jaipur Expressway early on Friday morning, police said.

The accident unfolded within minutes after a routine Fastag scan flagged insufficient balance, prompting the man to step out of his car to resolve the issue - only to be caught in the path of a speeding truck whose driver accelerated the moment the boom barrier lifted.

The victim, identified as Mubin Khan, lived in ward number seven of Tijara in Alwar district and had left home at dawn to drop his friend, Punit Khilwani, to the Indira Gandhi International Airport who was scheduled to fly to Bengaluru.

Investigators aware of the case details said Khan's Hyundai Aura was flagged when the automatic deduction of ₹95 failed because of low Fastag balance. Toll booth staff told him to pull over and surrender his mobile phone as collateral while he paid the manual toll of ₹118 via UPI. He parked the car a short distance ahead, got out, and walked toward the operator's cabin. He even recharged the Fastag with ₹100, but the update had not reflected by the time he reached the booth.