Kanpur, Nov 8: What should have been an evening of last-minute Diwali shopping ended in tragedy for a family in Kanpur, after a speeding Mahindra Thar rammed into an electric scooter and killed its 55-year-old rider on Saturday night, on the eve of Diwali. The man, identified as Santosh Singh Chauhan, died on the spot, and the occupants of the SUV allegedly fled the scene, leaving a crowd of shocked onlookers behind.
The accident took place at around 7.30 pm in the Awas Vikas-3 locality of Kanpur's Kalyanpur area, a busy residential neighbourhood that was crowded with festive shoppers and families heading home for the festival. According to eyewitnesses, the Thar was travelling at high speed when it lost control, struck several people and vehicles on the road, and then hit Chauhan's scooter with tremendous force.
Eyewitness Rakesh Kumar told reporters that the impact dragged the scooter for around 25 to 30 metres before the SUV eventually crashed into a railing and then into the boundary wall of a residential property. The mangled remains of the scooter were found trapped under the wheels of the Thar, a sight that drew a large crowd to the spot within minutes.
Video of the incident circulating on social media appears to show a woman stepping out of the driver's seat after the collision.
According to eyewitnesses, two women were travelling in the SUV when the accident took place, although one report said a man was also in the vehicle. The identities of the people in the Thar, including the person driving it at the time of the crash, have not yet been officially established by the police, who are still working to trace them.
What is clear from the accounts of those present is that the occupants left the scene soon after the collision, rather than waiting for the police or helping the injured man.
For Chauhan's family, the loss is made crueller by its timing and its setting. His son Rahul Chauhan told reporters that his father had left home only a short while before the accident, carrying a saree for his wife as a Diwali gift. The crash happened barely 500 metres from the family's home, on a road Chauhan would have known well. Instead of returning with a present for the festival, he never came home at all, and Diwali turned into a day of mourning for the household.
Police reached the spot soon after receiving information about the crash. Assistant Commissioner of Police Dileep Kumar Singh, who is posted in Kalyanpur, said officers found the scooter rider dead at the scene. The body was taken into custody and sent for post-mortem examination, and the family was informed. A case has been registered on the basis of a complaint filed by the victim's family, and further legal action is being taken, the officer said.
The Thar involved in the accident has been identified and seized by the police. The vehicle had the words "Krishna Group" written on its rear, and reports said it was registered to a person identified as Krishna Kumar, whose address is in Panka Bahadur Nagar in the Panki area of Kanpur. Police are examining closed-circuit television footage from the area and working to identify and trace the women who were travelling in the vehicle.
No arrests had been made at the time of the latest reports.
The incident has once again put the spotlight on road safety in Uttar Pradesh and across India, particularly during festival periods when traffic volumes surge and roads are crowded with shoppers, revellers and families. Diwali eve is traditionally one of the busiest nights of the year in cities like Kanpur, with markets staying open late and large numbers of people on two-wheelers moving between shops and homes.
The combination of heavy traffic, speeding and, in some cases, drivers unfamiliar with powerful vehicles creates a dangerous mix.
India records one of the highest numbers of road deaths in the world. According to the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, nearly 1.73 lakh people were killed in road accidents in the country in 2023, and Uttar Pradesh consistently accounts for one of the largest shares of those deaths. Two-wheeler riders are among the most vulnerable road users, and collisions involving large, fast-moving SUVs are frequently fatal for them, as the Kanpur crash shows once again.
The law, too, has been tightened against drivers who flee after a crash. Under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which replaced the Indian Penal Code, a driver who causes a death in a road accident and flees the scene without reporting it can face up to 10 years in prison, a much stiffer punishment than the earlier two-year maximum.
The provision was introduced precisely to deal with hit-and-run cases like the one in Kanpur, where the victims are left without help and the police are left to piece together what happened from witnesses and camera footage.
Whether the Kanpur case will be treated as a hit-and-run under that provision will depend on what the investigation establishes about who was driving and whether any attempt was made to report the accident. For now, the police case rests on the complaint of the family and the statements of eyewitnesses, and investigators will have to establish the sequence of events from the CCTV recordings, the condition of the vehicle and the accounts of those who were present.
The crash also raises questions about the growing presence of large, powerful SUVs on crowded city roads. The Thar, a heavy off-road vehicle, is popular among young buyers in Uttar Pradesh, and its size and weight mean that even a low-speed collision can be devastating for a scooter rider or a pedestrian.
Road safety experts have long argued that driver training and awareness have not kept pace with the spread of such vehicles, and that many buyers treat them as status symbols without fully understanding how they handle in city traffic.
In Kanpur, the immediate task is a police investigation. Officers will need to identify the driver, establish whether the vehicle was being driven rashly or negligently, and determine what charges should follow. The family, meanwhile, is left to grieve a death that happened a few hundred metres from home, on a night meant for celebration.
For them, and for the neighbours who gathered at the scene, the festival this year will be remembered not for lights and gifts but for a crash that should never have happened.
(Reporting based on NDTV, The Federal and Moneycontrol.)