Mumbai:

In yet another killer crash involving luxury cars, a 21-year-old man died in Thane near Mumbai late last night after a speeding Mercedes hit his two-wheeler from behind. The driver sped away and the high-end car was later found in a paid parking spot. Police have registered a case and efforts are on to identify the accused.

Eyewitnesses have said that the speeding Mercedes was closely followed by a Thar SUV, also driven rashly, and the two vehicles were headed towards Mumbai when the accident occurred.

Senior Police Inspector Shailesh Salvi said Darshan Hegde was crossing the Nitin Company Junction area around 1.50 am when a Mercedes Benz hit the two-wheeler he was riding. “He has died in the crash. We have registered a case at Nuapada police station and the probe is on. Two teams are scanning CCTV footage in the area and checking RTO details to identify the accused,” he said.

The case has been registered under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections relating to rash driving and causing death due to negligence, and relevant sections of the Motor Vehicles Act.

An eyewitness said, “We heard a loud crash around 2 am. We saw that a Mercedes had hit a two-wheeler. I put him (Darshan) into an auto-rickshaw and rushed him to a hospital. He was alive for about 15 minutes, then he died.” Asked if the Mercedes, and the Thar following it, stopped after the crash, he replied, “They did not stop at all, not for a second. They were driving very fast.”

The hit-and-run case is the latest in a string of incidents in Maharashtra in which rash driving has claimed lives.

In May, a speeding Porsche with a teenager at the wheel hit a bike from behind. The crash left two young engineers dead and sparked nationwide outrage. In July, a rashly driven BMW hit a two-wheeler in Mumbai’s Worli. The woman pillion rider was dragged for about 100 metres and suffered fatal injuries. 

New Delhi:

In yet another hit-and-run case, a 34-year-old cyclist was found dead on a south Delhi road after he was hit by a Mercedes car on Saturday, police said.

A passerby called up the police after seeing the man lying in a pool of blood on the Ashram to Bhogal flyover. The body was found on the roadside while his cycle was discovered around 150 metres away.

The victim has been identified as Rajesh Kumar, a gardener, who was a resident of South Delhi’s Madanpur Khadar. A case has been registered and an investigation is on.

During investigation, the driver of the Mercedes was identified as 45-year-old Pradeep Gautam, who lives in Noida. The owner of the luxury car had given Gautam the vehicle to put it up for sale.

Gautam has been arrested and his vehicle was seized for further investigation.

The postmortem will be conducted today and the body will be handed over to the relatives after the autopsy.

Last week, in a similar hit-and-run incident, a man was killed and his friend was severely injured when a speeding SUV crushed them at Versova beach in the early hours of the morning.

The victim was a 36-year-old rickshaw driver who was sleeping on the beach with his friend to escape the heat. The driver of the SUV and his friend were arrested by the police.