In the early hours of Sunday, a phone buzzed in a household in Jalandhar, Punjab. It was an automatic emergency alert from the iPhone of 18-year-old Divit Auluck, and it reached his mother with the exact location of the spot where something had gone terribly wrong. The notification woke her up. She called her son right away, but he did not answer.
Within hours, the family learned the devastating truth. Divit, son of Speed Records owner Dinesh Auluck and nephew of rapper Yo Yo Honey Singh, had died in a road accident in Jalandhar in the early hours of November 1, along with his friend Aarav Talwar, 19, son of the owner of Pappi Sweets. Three other young people travelling in the car survived.
The accident happened at around 3 am, when the car the group was travelling in collided with a municipal corporation tractor-trolley parked on a flyover in Jalandhar. The young men were reportedly on their way to a birthday party. The impact left the vehicle severely damaged, and police received information about the crash at around 3 am and immediately reached the spot, according to the station house officer of Police Station Baradari, Sahil Chaudhary.
What has drawn attention across the country is not only the tragedy but the way the family first learned of it. Divit had enabled Apple's Crash Detection feature on his iPhone and registered his mother's number for emergency alerts. As soon as the collision occurred, the phone automatically sent an alert to her mobile, making her the first family member to learn about the accident.
After the alert, the family tried calling Divit, but the calls went unanswered. They then contacted one of his friends, who confirmed that an accident had taken place and that Divit was being taken to Civil Hospital.
Crash Detection is available on iPhone 14 and later models, as well as Apple Watch Series 8 and later, Apple Watch SE second generation, and Apple Watch Ultra models. It uses motion sensors to recognise a severe car crash. When it detects one, the phone displays an alert and sounds an alarm, and begins a countdown.
If the user does not respond, it automatically calls emergency services and messages designated emergency contacts with the user's location. Emergency calls depend on available cellular, Wi-Fi calling or supported satellite connectivity. Apple also recommends setting up a Medical ID and emergency contacts through the Health app, so that important information can be shared instantly during an emergency.
The feature, in other words, did exactly what it was designed to do: it noticed a crash that its owner could not report, and it told someone who could help. It could not change what happened that night. As one report of the incident put it with stark simplicity, technology could not change what happened that night, and the loss has shaken the Punjabi music community.
Honey Singh shared an emotional message on Instagram after the death of his nephew, writing that the loss had left him devastated. "It's a dark decade for me. Loss of my nephew is devastating. Bhole nath mehr mehr mehr," he wrote.
Singer Jazzy B posted a photograph of Divit with Honey Singh, writing that he had no words for what he was feeling and calling Divit "Sada puttar", our son. On Monday, Honey Singh and singer Gurnam Bhullar visited the residence of Dinesh Auluck and met the bereaved family.
Divit's cremation was scheduled for Tuesday, November 3, at 1 pm at the Model Town Cremation Ground in Jalandhar, with Honey Singh and other celebrities expected to attend.
The accident has also raised questions about safety arrangements at the site. Reports said the municipal trolley parked on the flyover had no reflectors at the rear, making it difficult for approaching motorists to spot it from a distance, and that municipal workers had allegedly failed to install barricades, red flags or warning signboards around the work area.
Those claims, if confirmed, would point to a familiar and preventable pattern on Indian roads: stationary vehicles and work zones left unmarked in the dark, turning a routine stretch of road into a hazard for drivers who have no warning of what lies ahead.
Five people were travelling in the car: Divit Auluck, Aarav Talwar, Raghav Punchi, Kavya, and Pushkar Sharda, son of Aam Aadmi Party councillor Deepak Sharda.
The loss of two teenagers from well-known local families, in a crash involving a civic body's vehicle, has given the incident a resonance beyond the immediate circle of the bereaved, and it has prompted renewed discussion in Punjab about road safety, night-time visibility and the responsibility of municipal authorities to mark their equipment properly.
The wider lesson of the incident is a double one. On the one hand, it shows how a feature built into millions of phones can buy precious minutes in an emergency, alerting a family before a stranger's phone call or a police visit ever could.
Setting it up takes only a few minutes: on an iPhone, users can go to Settings, then Emergency SOS, and make sure the crash detection and emergency call options are switched on, with emergency contacts added so that a trusted person is notified automatically.
On the other hand, the incident is a reminder that no device can substitute for safe roads and safe driving. Crash Detection provides an additional layer of assistance, but it does not replace careful driving, visible road markings, or timely emergency response.
A parked trolley without reflectors, a flyover without warning signs, a late-night journey: each element on its own might have been survivable, but together they proved fatal for two young men with their lives ahead of them.
As the family gathers for the last rites, the story that will stay with many readers is the image of a mother woken in the dark by her son's phone, telling her where he was before anyone else could. It is a small, heartbreaking illustration of how technology now sits inside the most intimate moments of grief, and of why the simplest safety steps, on the road and on the phone, matter more than they ever seem to in advance.
(Reporting based on NDTV Profit and PTC News.)