HYDERABAD: A day after the road accident on Road No. 45 in Jubilee Hills which claimed the life of two-month-old Ranveer Chauhan and injured five others, police on Friday claimed that they were yet to trace the accused who was behind the wheel of the SUV which mowed down the boy. The SUV was sporting the assembly sticker of Bodhan TRS MLA Shakil Aamir Mohammed.
Soon after the accident took a controversial turn, Shakil released a video from Dubai clarifying that the SUV was owned by his cousin and not by him. The SUV hit a group of women balloon vendors who have migrated from Maharashtra to Hyderabad.
A special team of Task Force and local police were deployed on Friday night to analyse the CCTV cameras to trace the driver. “In one footage, we found two persons getting down from the car but it is a long distance visual. We could not make out who they were,” a top officer told TOI. Police said that since there was no clarity on who was driving the SUV, they were suspecting the role of various persons, including Shakil’s cousin, his son and driver. A case was registered under IPC sections of rash and negligence causing death and causing hurt by an act which endangers human life.
The SUV, which had a temporary registration number, first hit a road divider at 8.30pm on Thursday while cruising at a high speed on the cable bridge. Later, it crashed into a tree on the median before dashing into five women and two children. Ranveer, who was held by his mother Kajal Chauhan, died on the spot, while two women suffered multiple injuries and were undergoing treatment in NIMS. Three other women and an infant were treated as outpatients.
There were conflicting versions on how many were seated inside the SUV at the time of accident and also about what happened after the accident. One of the women claimed that she saw a person coming out of the car. However, local police said that as per the information they gathered from eyewitnesses, there were two persons. The vehicle was owned by urban infra and transport belonging to the Regional Transport Organisation, Nizamabad.
“Sensing the danger of locals attacking him, a person in the driver’s seat got down and ran away. The other person seated next to him also came out and fled away in a different direction. There are a few CCTV cameras belonging to individuals in that area but they were not working. However, the SUV’s image was captured on cameras coming from the cable bridge,” Jubilee Hills inspector Rajasekhar Reddy said. Making the matters worse, the car windows were fully tinted.
One of the women told mediapersons that they were hit by the vehicle one after another. “One of us came under the vehicle, another got struck in the thick bushes with the baby and I fell on the other side of the road under the impact of the crash,’’ she said.
An eyewitness said had the SUV not hit the tree, it would have gone on to the other side of the road and crashed into vehicles going in the opposite direction.
