The police in Chandigarh has arrested a young woman who fled after the car she was driving knocked down and killed a six-year-old boy and his older cousin on Tuesday night.
The nineteen-year-old Amanat Brar — the daughter of a Dubai-based merchant Navy officer Jaswinder Singh — has been arrested and charged with “rash and negligent driving” (IPC Section 279) and “causing death due to negligence” (IPC section 304-A). She has admitted fleeing after hitting the two-wheeler because she “lost her nerve”.
Ms Brar, who passed her school exams in this summer, was driving a Honda Accord car (CH03R 0018) which is registered in the name of Lt. Col. G.S. Brar (retired), her paternal grandfather. It took police officials more than 20 hours to track down and arrest the young woman.
Passersby, who witnessed the accident in an upscale neighborhood only yards from the official residences of Punjab and Haryana’s chief ministers, told the police two groups of youngsters were racing their cars when one of the vehicles hit a motorcycle fatally injuring Harpreet Singh (6) who was riding pillion behind his 21-year-old cousin Sukhwinder.
Both victims, residents of the nearby Kansal Village, were literally crushed under the Honda’s front wheels and declared “dead” on arrival at hospital.
Eyewitnesses told the police that both the young woman driving the Honda and another girl accompanying her got down from their battered car after the accident but instead of doing anything to help the victims they fled the scene in a Maruti Swift (PB65E 2040) — the other vehicle in the “drunken car race.”
“Both women appeared very unsteady on their feet and were apparently drunk,” Sarabjit Singh, another motorcyclist who happened to be passing the spot told the police.
Amanat Brar who was let off on bail from Chandigarh’s Sector-3 police station after she conceded to undergo a delayed medical examination, has apparently refused to identify either her companion or the occupants of the second vehicle who drove her from the accident site. Also denying being part of any car race, she said the accident occurred as she was going to drop a friend home.
But police officials did not seem inclined to treat the case as anything more than an ordinary accident.