BHOPAL: Three siblings were killed and their parents critically injured when a truck loaded with gravel overturned on their hut in MP’s Damoh district on Friday night. The truck driver was killed, too.
Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia expressed their condolences.
The Ahirwar family of Anjania Taparia village, around 50km from Damoh district headquarters, was settling down for the night when tragedy struck. Hariram and Neha were watching TV and their children — Omkar, 16, Akash, 17, and Manisha 19 — were already asleep when the truck slammed into an electric pole, careened off the road and toppled on their hut around 9pm.
A mountain of gravel buried the house, and the truck tumbled on top of the heap.
The noise brought villagers running to the site. “We could see only a heap of gravel where the house was,” said Raghvendra Ahirwar, a local.
Villagers began digging with shovels and even bare hands to rescue the trapped family. Police arrived, too. It took an hour for them to reach the victims. By then, the three teenagers were dead. The driver died after reaching hospital around 11pm, said Damoh CSP Abhishek Tiwari. Hariram, Neha and the truck cleaner are in a critical condition.
The victims’ relatives and other villagers blocked a road, demanding compensation. BSP MLA from Patharia, Rambai, went to the hospital to meet the bereaved kin of the family.
