Sultanpur: Four persons, including three relatives of a deceased soldier were killed after the ambulance carrying his body crashed into a parked truck on the Purvanchal Expressway in Uttar Pradesh’s Sultanpur early on Sunday.
The fourth person to be killed was the ambulance driver.
The ambulance was carrying the body of Subedar Major Satyawan Singh (50), a resident of Rudrapur in Deoria, who was posted in Meerut, the police said.
He died while receiving treatment for kidney disease at the Command Hospital in Chandigarh.
The victims have been identified by the police as the Army JCO’s brother Ram Samujh, son Gaurav Singh, nephew Rajan Singh, and the ambulance driver, Jaspal.
The impact of the accident was so severe that the front portion of the ambulance was totally mangled. The two persons seated in the front, including the driver, died on the spot. Their bodies were trapped inside the wreckage and had to be extricated by cutting open the vehicle, The Indian Express reported.
The others died during treatment at a government hospital in Ayodhya. The bodies have been sent for postmortem examination.
The bodies would be sent to Deoria after the completion of formalities, district magistrate Indrajeet Singh said. “We are coordinating with officials in Deoria and the Army to facilitate the process,” he added.
They received information from the control room on Sunday morning about an ambulance accident involving an unidentified vehicle on the Purvanchal Expressway, the Sultanpur police said. A police team reached the spot and rushed the injured occupants to a hospital, where doctors declared them dead.
Other family members of the officer were travelling in a separate vehicle that was following the ambulance.