A pickup truck carrying farm labourers overturned in the Ratlam district of Madhya Pradesh on Thursday night, killing an elderly woman and a 15-year-old girl. 29 others were injured due to the impact, reported news agency PTI.
An official claimed that a buffalo unexpectedly entered a road close to Lambakhora village, causing the commercial vehicle's driver to lose control.
According to Piploda police station in-charge R S Barde, the driver slammed on the brakes to save the animal, but in the process, the pickup truck toppled, injuring 31 people. Of those injured, a teenager succumbed to her wounds on the route to the Ratlam district hospital, while a 60-year-old woman passed away during treatment, reported PTI.
Seventeen of the injured were taken to the district hospital and the rest were treated at the medical facility in Sarvan village, Barde said.
In a similar road accident last month, a truck carrying bricks and stones toppled in the Mangolpuri area of Delhi, resulting in one fatality and two injuries. All three persons were beneath the truck as it flipped over, according to sources, reported ANI.
In another case of a truck getting flipped, in December last year, a total of as many as 1,265 cartons of apples were stolen by villagers and passersby after the fruit-laden truck overturned on the Delhi-Amritsar highway in Fatehgarh Sahib district. The police had booked unidentified persons after the video of cartons of apples being taken away went viral on social media.
Two Samaritans from Punjab came forward to help the Kashmiri man, whose cartons of apples were stolen. Rajwinder Singh from Patiala and Gurpreet Singh from Mohali gave a cheque for Rs. 9.12 lakh to Mohammad Shahid, a resident of Sopore in Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir, to compensate for the loss he suffered.
(With inputs from PTI)