3 killed in crash while returning to wedding venue for phone

Rudrapur: Three young men were killed after their scooter collided head-on with an SUV on the Tanda forest stretch of Rudrapur-Haldwani road around midnight while they were returning to Haldwani to retrieve a mobile phone left behind at a wedding venue, police said on Monday. The deceased — Aniket Kashyap, 20, a resident of Jaspur, Rohan Kumar, 22, from Haridwar, and Akash Kashyap, 24, of Rampur in Uttar Pradesh — worked at an Ashok Leyland plant in SIDCUL Pantnagar.Police said the trio had attended a wedding in Haldwani on Saturday evening and returned safely to Rudrapur later that night. Around midnight, they realised that one of their mobile phones had been left behind at the venue and set out again for Haldwani on a scooter. Pantnagar SHO Nandan Singh Rawat said, “Around midnight, when they reached the Tanda forest area, nearly 2km from Sanjay Van towards Haldwani, their scooter collided head-on with an oncoming SUV. The impact was severe, leaving them critically injured.”Passersby alerted police, following which a team reached the spot and shifted the injured to the district hospital, where doctors declared them brought dead despite efforts to revive them, Rawat added. Police said the SUV was also badly damaged and its airbags had deployed.