Three women crushed to death by policeman's car

3 others injured, cop says he dozed off at the wheel

Three women were killed and three others injured after being hit by a car driven by a Delhi Police sub-inspector in south Delhi's Badarpur on Tuesday.

 Family members of the deceased protested at Badarpur police station after the bodies were not handed over to them till late afternoon.

Culprit Rishipal, 58, who was posted with the police control room, has been arrested. He claimed to have dozed off at the wheel. The deceased have been identified as Shakuntala, 55, Meera, 50, and Maya, 28, residents of Lakadpur in Badarpur. They worked as sanitation workers.

Police said the incident occurred around 9 am when Rishipal’s Hyundai Santro hit a group of six persons cleaning Mehrauli-Badarpur Road near Delhi-Faridabad Skyway.He claimed to have lost control over the car after falling asleep at the wheel. 

Rishipal, a resident of north Delh’s Sant Nagar, had been planning to buy a property after retirement in January 2016. On Tuesday, he was going to see a plot in Faridabad.

Rishipal had initially tried to flee from the spot, but soon stopped and made a PCR call.

“Shakuntala died on spot, while Meera and Maya succumbed to their injuries,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (South East) Mandeep Singh Randhawa. The injured were taken to three hospitals in the capital and in Faridabad. The condition of the three injured is stated to be out of danger.

In his statement, Rishipal told police that he was driving his private car after completing his night duty at police headquarters’ command room in ITO. A case under sections 279 (rash driving), 337 (causing hurt) and 304-A (causing death by negligence) of the Indian Penal Code has been registered with Badarpur police station. Police have denied that Rishipal was driving under the influence of alcohol. “His medical examination was conducted at AIIMS. We have also obtained and analysed CCTV footage of the area,” Randhawa added.

A police team also inspected the spot and found that the sanitation workers had properly marked parts of the road which they were cleaning.A couple of them also diverted traffic to avoid such a mishap. The cleaning work was conducted in shifts twice a day.

As the bodies were not handed over to families till late Tuesday afternoon, the relatives of the deceased also protested at Badarpur police station. The bodies were later handed over after post-mortem.

The incident comes a day after a traffic police head constable was arrested and dismissed from service after he was caught on camera attacking a woman with a brick near south Delhi’s Golf Links.