Delhi couple die in mangled car on Mumbai Expressway as four young children wait at home

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A couple from Delhi died afer being trapped for nearly eight hours inside their mangled car on the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway following a hit-and-run incident.

The victims, Laxmi Ram (42), a contractual labourer and his wife Kusumlata (38), were returning from Hindaun in Rajasthan’s Karauli district to their home in Delhi’s Budh Vihar when the incident happened.

According to the Nuh police, an unidentified heavy vehicle rammed their grey Maruti WagonR from behind at high speed between 11.30 pm and midnight on Tuesday near Nowshera village, smashing it against the metal crash barrier.

Police, however, only reached the spot around 7.30 am on Wednesday after a patrol team was notified by a passerby. By then, it was too late. The couple had succumbed to their injuries and blood loss while still confined in the mangled vehicle. The position of the bodies, police noted, indicated Laxmi Ram had managed to hold on to his wife in their final moments.

The couple leave behind four young children — two sons and two daughters.

The tragedy’ prolonged nature has drawn sharp attention to the apathy of night-time travellers on the busy expressway. Station House Officer Inspector Praveen Kumar was cited by The Indian Express as saying that police responded as soon as they were alerted, but implied a failure of civic duty by others. “Police came as soon as they were alerted,” he said, “indicating that night drivers merely drove past.”

The grief-stricken father of Laxmi Ram, 65-year-old Devi Singh, echoed this anguish in a conversation with The Indian Express. “The incident happened just before midnight, the police told me after they looked at CCTV footage. The car remained there through the night and multiple vehicles must have passed it by…,” he said, his voice choked with emotion.

Singh, a farmer from the Dalit community, reportedly said that his sorrow was compounded by anxiety for his orphaned grandchildren. He described himself as a small farmer with only a few buffaloes and expressed profound worry about the future and education of the children, who had been in Delhi at the time of the accident.

The family’s ordeal began when Singh, unable to reach his son on the phone the next morning, finally had his call answered by personnel from the Jaisinghpur post, who delivered the devastating news.

His handwritten complaint, detailing how the couple left for Delhi around 7 pm on December 2, now forms the basis of the First Information Report (FIR). The Nuh Sadar police station has registered a case against the unknown driver of the heavy vehicle for rash driving and death by negligence.

Investigators are examining CCTV footage from the expressway. Inspector Kumar stated that two heavy vehicles had been flagged on the footage and that teams were tracing their owners, expressing confidence the accused would be apprehended soon.

The post-mortem was conducted at the Government Medical College and Hospital in Nalhar on Wednesday, after which the bodies were handed over to the family. The cremation took place on Thursday morning in their village after the bodies were brought back from Nuh.