Two staff members of a fast-food joint were killed Wednesday after being hit by a speeding car on Gondal Road of Rajkot. The driver of the car managed to flee the spot, said police. Santoshkumar Rao (18) and Sunilkumar Verma (19), staff at Raj Pau Bhaji—a fast-food joint opposite Bombay Hotel on Gondal Road, were killed after they were allegedly hit by a speeding car around 2:45 am. According to an FIR registered at ‘A’ Division police station, the duo, who were natives of Birpur in Uttar Pradesh’s Bahraich district, were walking back to their rented house on Street No.18 in Vijay Plot when they were hit by a speeding car. The FIR quotes Raju Pau Bhaji owner Girish Dharamdasani that after Rao and Verma left the outlet, he saw a car speeding past the shop and going in the direction of Suryakant Hotel. “I then heard a loud noise of a vehicle hitting something and soon, the electricity supply was disrupted. Assuming that there was some road accident, I walked out to help people and spotted a motor car damaged in an accident at the corner of Street No.15 of Vijay Plot. The car had damaged a pole of PGVCL transformer at the spot, and due to short-circuit, there was a power outage,” the FIR states. While people were helping the car driver to come out of the mangled vehicle, someone spotted two men bleeding on the footpath near Malaviya Vadi, some 15 feet away from the car, Dharamdasani stated. “When I went there, I recognised Rao and Verma,” the FIR read. Soon, an emergency medical technician, who arrived on the spot in response to a distress call with an ambulance, pronounced the duo dead. Meanwhile, the car driver, as soon as he was rescued from the damaged vehicle, fled the spot abandoning the car registered in Rajkot district, Dharamdasni told the police. Newsletter | Click to get the day's best explainers in your inbox Based on Dharamdasani's complaint, ‘A’ Division police has booked the unknown driver under IPC Sections 279 (rash driving on a public way), 304A (causing death by negligence) as well as under the Motor Vehicles Act’s Section 177 (punishment for dangerous driving), 184 (dangerous driving) and 134 (driver of a vehicle failing to perform its duty after his vehicle is involved in an accident).
