Pamela Rooks

New Delhi, Nov. 27: Film-maker Pamela Rooks suffered serious head injuries in a car accident near Vasant Kunj early on Friday morning while returning from the Indira Gandhi International Airport.

Rooks had landed from Amsterdam with her companion, designer Richard Shivaji Rao Holkar. Around 4.30 am, their Toyota Land Cruiser was hit by a Maruti Alto coming from the opposite direction. In the impact, a speaker in the car got dislodged and hit Rooks on the head. Holkar and the driver were unhurt.

Rooks was taken to Max Balaji Hospital in Paharganj.

According to police, there were three persons in the Alto, including the driver. Of them, Devansh and Sahil, both in their twenties, were killed. The third person was admitted in hospital in critical condition.

Doctors at the Max Balaji Hospital said they are “cautiously optimistic” about Rooks’s condition and added that she was stable. Rooks has been put in a drug-induced coma and will be kept in that state till Monday, they said.

Holkar told the police that the driver of the Alto lost control of the car. The vehicle hit a road divider, became airborne and then landed on the bonnet of the Land Cruiser. The Alto then spun around and hit the right side of Rooks’s car where she was sitting.

An FIR has been lodged at the Vasant Kunj police station. DCP south-west Ravindra Yadav said the police are probing as to whose fault caused the accident.

Rooks was born in Calcutta and is the director of Train to Pakistan ? a film based on Khushwant Singh’s novel ? which was screened in several international film festivals.