AGRA: Five persons, including the wife and son of a retired Uttar Pradesh cop, and the driver of an Agra-Noida bus, were killed following a collision between a car and a bus on Yamuna Expressway near milestone 71 in Naujheel area of Mathura on Friday morning.
Police said the accident took place at 4am when the driver of an empty private bus on its way to Noida dozed off and the vehicle collided with a car coming from the opposite direction.
Of the five occupants in the car, four died on the spot while one was critically injured and admitted to a local hospital in Mathura, and then moved to Agra.
Superintendent of police (rural) Shireesh Chandra said the deceased’s bodies have been sent for post-mortem and further investigations are underway.
The deceased have been identified as Shiv Sagar Yadav (27), his mother Premlala (55), cousin brother Gaurav (29) and younger brother Mohinesh’s friend Aaryan Chaudhary (22), who belonged to Ghaziabad and bus driver Balwant Singh, a resident of Punjab’s Pathankot. Mohinesh is in the ICU of a private hospital in Agra.
Shiv Sagar’s sister Sandhya, told TOI that her brothers and mother had left Ghaziabad around 1:30am and were heading towards Etawah to meet their relatives. “All of us had celebrated Diwali together and after that, my brother asked my mother to accompany him to meet relatives in Etawah. We didn’t know this would end in such a terrible tragedy.”
Similar accidents have also taken place in the recent past on the expressway. In February this year, seven people, including four members of a family from Haryana, were killed when an oil tanker crashed into the divider and turned turtle after hitting their car in Naujheel area.
Two years ago, an ambulance carrying a body from Jammu to Bihar hit the divider and went to the other side and collided head-on with a hatchback killing seven people.
