Kota: At least eight people died and more than a dozen others sustained injuries when a Tempo Traveller veered off the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway and plunged into a rainwater drain in Rajasthan’s Kota district on Saturday.
Police said the mishap was reported shortly after 7 am near Seemlia, where the vehicle en route from Madhya Pradesh to Jaipur, reportedly lost control while crossing a culvert and fell into the drain below.
Rescue teams and local police rushed to the site and extricated those trapped inside the mangled vehicle. While the bodies of the deceased were recovered from the wreckage, the injured were shifted to Medical College New Hospital and MBS Hospital for treatment, as reported by ETV Bharat.
Seemlia Police Station in-charge Nand Singh said the vehicle had passed the Karadiya toll plaza and was proceeding towards Sultanpur when the driver is suspected to have dozed off. He said the Traveller, moving at high speed, rammed into the central divider before toppling into the drain from the culvert.
The impact left the front portion of the vehicle badly crushed, police said.
“Eight people have died in the accident, while more than 12 people have been injured. Some of them are in serious condition,” another police official said.
Saturday’s accident came weeks after a similar crash on the expressway. On September 29, two cars fell into a 30-foot-deep ditch in Madhya Pradesh’s Ratlam district within a few hours. Four people died and seven were injured. The dead included two women from Punjab and two men from Gujarat.
