BHOPAL: Nine police personnel, including a Circle Superintendent of Police (CSP), were removed from duty after a paddy-laden truck ran over devotees outside the Sheetla Mata temple on the outskirts of Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh, killing 15 people and injuring at least 26, officials said.
The accident occurred around 1.30 am on Sunday, when devotees had gathered outside the temple for early morning prayers on Mahashtami during the ongoing Sharadiya Navratri celebrations.
The truck, which was transporting paddy from Gwalior’s Dabra grain market to Punjab, allegedly entered an area where vehicle movement was prohibited because of the heavy influx of devotees. According to a senior police official, the driver appeared to have followed Google Maps to take a shorter route.
The truck reportedly lost control on a narrow, sloping road before crashing into the temple’s entrance gate and boundary wall and ploughing into devotees waiting to enter the shrine. The impact damaged the structure, leaving some victims trapped beneath debris and the overturned vehicle.
Investigators suspect that the truck’s brakes failed. Another truck carrying paddy to Punjab was reportedly following the vehicle, a senior police official said.
The driver, Dilbag Singh, a resident of Punjabi Colony in Delhi, and the truck’s owner, Harpreet Singh, a native of Ludhiana in Punjab, have been taken into custody.
The police action following the accident includes the removal of the area’s Circle Superintendent of Police and the suspension of eight other personnel. Those suspended include three police station in-charges, a traffic police inspector, a head constable and three constables. The action followed allegations that personnel on duty failed to stop the truck from entering the restricted area.
The victims were mostly from Gwalior and neighbouring districts, including Shivpuri, Morena and Sheopur. The deceased included 50-year-old Sarla Tomar, the only woman among the 15 victims. The other 14 were men, nine of them aged between 13 and 18. Two of the teenage victims, Aman Tyagi, 13, and Luv Tyagi, 15, were suspected to be brothers.
A senior doctor at Jaya Arogya Government Hospital, who was part of the team that conducted post-mortems on most of the victims, said many had died of severe crush injuries.
Chief Minister Mohan Yadav announced compensation of Rs 4 lakh for each bereaved family, Rs 2 lakh for each seriously injured person and Rs 50,000 for other injured victims.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced ex-gratia assistance of Rs 2 lakh each for the families of the deceased from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund (PMNRF) and Rs 50,000 for each injured person.
The accident has raised questions over how a heavy vehicle entered a restricted area crowded with devotees despite the arrangements made for Navratri.
