A 28-year-old man has been booked for culpable homicide not amounting to murder after a high-speed crash claimed three lives and left several others injured in a multi-vehicle pile-up on the Sector 5/8 dividing road in Chandigarh on Sunday afternoon.
The accused, Rahul, a resident of Kishangarh, was allegedly driving under the influence of bhang when his Maruti Suzuki SX4 rammed into multiple vehicles around 4 pm near the Sector 5 turn. Police have invoked Section 105 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), a non-bailable offence that applies when a person causes death by a reckless act with knowledge that it is likely to be fatal, though without intent to kill.
According to traffic personnel who witnessed the incident, the car was being driven at an extremely high speed from the Sector 4/5 and 8/9 chowk side towards Heera Singh Chowk. Despite visible traffic movement, the driver neither slowed down nor sounded the horn.
The vehicle first hit a cyclist with such force that he was flung into the air before crashing onto the road with severe injuries. Within seconds, the car rammed into an e-rickshaw carrying around five passengers, overturning it. The overturned e-rickshaw then collided with a Baleno approaching from the opposite direction, while the speeding SX4 also struck an Innova, triggering a chain collision.
The crash resulted in a multi-vehicle pile-up involving a cyclist, an e-rickshaw, a Baleno, an Innova and the offending SX4. Police said that the accused had been celebrating Shivratri with friends and was on his way home when the accident occurred.
No divider, staggered junctions make Vigyan Path a fatal stretch
The accident has once again spotlighted long-standing safety concerns on Vigyan Path, a key arterial stretch increasingly used by commuters travelling between Nayagaon and Panchkula. The stretch has staggered intersections with no central divider, making it prone to high-speed crashes and unsafe overtaking. Earlier in 2021, traffic police officials had submitted a detailed road safety proposal, including declaring the 4.6-km Vigyan Path a no-overtaking zone and installing double yellow lines and signage to prevent dangerous overtaking and reckless lane changes, but these recommendations were ignored and left unimplemented for years.
Officials have repeatedly flagged the risks posed by uncontrolled merging of vehicles from multiple V-5 feeder roads onto Vigyan Path and frequent lane changes, but authorities did not act on the safety blueprint, leading to multiple fatal crashes on the stretch over the past few years. In the aftermath of the accident, traffic police have decided to undertake a detailed survey of Vigyan Path to assess infrastructural gaps and recommend corrective measures to prevent further tragedies.
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