Five persons died when the car they were travelling in fell off the road down a gorge nearly 10 kilometres ahead of Kalsi in Dehradun district. According to the information received from the State Emergency Operation Centre (SEOC), the mishap is believed to have occurred around Saturday midnight. However, the local police stated that the accident appears to have occurred on Friday evening. Prima facie the cause of accident seems to be over speeding. The bodies have been retrieved from the gorge by the combined team of State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), fire and emergency services and local police. However, this report of road accident has exposed the tall claims made by the police department prior to the monsoon season regarding measures for preventing road accidents especially on mountain roads.
The car number HR 02 AE 6806 fell off the road down a 300 metre deep gorge at around midnight, resulting in the death of all the five persons in the vehicle. The five deceased have been identified as Virendra Singh (34) resident of Saharanpur, Gaurav Tyagi (35) resident of Saharanpur, Deepak Tomar (34) resident of Saharanpur, Shakti (31) resident of Uttar Pradesh and Sachin (30) resident of Uttar Pradesh.
Station Officer of Kalsi police station, Vipin Bahuguna said, “We received information at about 7:30 am in the morning. The bodies were sent for post mortem and are being handed over to their guardians.”
According to the official sources, the area where this accident happened has no CCTV cameras installed. The local police also state that the site of the mishap is densely forested due to which it took time for the accident to be discovered. However, if the SEOC is to be believed and the accident took place at midnight, observers also question why the vehicle from outside the State was allowed to ply on the mountain road at midnight and that too in rainy weather. Questions also arise if the mishap occurred on Friday evening as it took more than a day for the mishap to be discovered.