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A youth hurls a brick at the killer trailer at Nildih on Wednesday. Picture by Bhola Prasad
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A 70-year-old man was run over by a trailer on the busy Golmuri-Telco road on Wednesday morning triggering vociferous protests from local residents who did not allow the police to take the body away till late in the afternoon.
Sources said Fouja Singh, who worked as security guard with a private firm, was run over by the speeding trailer when he was walking towards his home in Golmuri’s Namda Bustee around 11am. The trailer apparently swerved from its path and ran Singh, who was walking at the side of the road, over from behind near Nildih Park in the Golmuri police station area. The 70-year-old died on the spot.
The driver of the killer trailer, however, managed to flee with his vehicle (NLO1G-4348), which was later found abandoned a little distance away from the mishap spot.
As the news of the mishap spread, hundreds of residents from Namda Bustee poured out on to the streets and set up a blockade on the Golmuri-Telco Road demanding a compensation of Rs 10 lakh for the kin of the deceased and immediate arrest of the trailer driver. The angry mob also did not let the police take the body away, which was lying at the spot till the filing of this report.
“We want the police to arrest and produce the trailer driver/owner before us so that we can settle the issue of compensation,” an agitator said.
Later, a team of senior police officers, led by SP (city) K.N. Chowdhury, rushed to the spot to hold talks with the protesters. They failed to convince the agitators to lift the blockade. “We have identified the owner of the trailer. The vehicle belongs to one Rekha Devi, who is a resident of Golmuri’s Cable Town. We are, however, not going to produce her before the mob,” said officer in-charge of Golumri police station Nand Kishore.
Kishore said the police were still drawing up a sequence of events that might have led to the mishap. “All we know right now is that the trailer was in high speed,” the police officer said.
He added that though the mishap took place on a busy road, they had not found any eye witnesses who could help them in structuring the sequence of events. “Once we determine the exact reason as to why the mishap took place, we will settle the compensation claims,” Kishore said.
The blockade, in the meanwhile, caused serpentine queues of vehicle on both sides of the road.
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