Calcutta, March 8: A family of three returning from a holiday in Santiniketan was crushed to death inside their Santro when it rammed into a truck standing on the Durgapur Expressway near Singur this afternoon.

Dhakuria resident Shyamal Basu, 53, his wife Mohua, 42, and their son 17-year-old son Soumik, who wrote his Madhyamik examinations this year, died on the spot.

Police said the car was in such a bad shape that they could not initially reach the three trapped inside.

“The doors were jammed. We had to bring gas cutters to open them,” said Priyabrata Bakshi, the officer in charge of Singur police station.

Shyamal, an executive in IT solutions firm Computer Maintenance Corporation, was at the wheel. His son was in the front seat and his wife was sitting at the back.

Some people living near the crash site heard an ear-splitting noise around 2pm. “When they arrived at the spot, they saw the three lying still,” Bakshi said.

Prahlad Dutta, who was passing by, said he saw the car hit the back of the truck. “The car went underneath the truck. We immediately asked the truck driver to move his vehicle,” he said.

The people said they could not pull the three out of the mangled mess that the car had turned into and had no option but to stand and watch.

“The car was smashed and the three were crushed inside. We immediately called the police and asked them to come with gas cutters and other equipment,” said Ratan Samanta.

The police took almost an hour to bring the three out. They were rushed to a nearby private healthcare unit in the hope that they might still be alive. But doctors declared all three dead on arrival.

“The victims had received multiple injuries on their heads and chests. The seats of the car were soaked in blood,” an officer said.

The bodies were sent to the Serampore Walsh Hospital for post-mortem, which will be conducted on Sunday.

The police said the Basus had left Calcutta after Soumik’s Madhyamik exams got over.

The Singur officers contacted their counterparts in Jadavpur police station, who went to family’s flat in Sarat Ghosh Garden Lane. But neighbours could not remember the day the Basus had left for the trip, an officer said.

As soon as Shyamal’s colleagues at his Camac Street office got the news, they rushed to the accident site. They also informed his relatives.