Car ‘brushed’ on road falls into canal, 2 kids drown

GHAZIABAD: Two children returning home with their uncle drowned in the Hindon on Friday after their car veered off the road and fell into the canal, allegedly because of a sideswipe from a Maruti Ritz during an overtaking manoeuvre.
The car, a Maruti 800, went off the 10-metre-wide Hindon canal road, bounced across a ditch a feet deep and five feet wide and broke through a steel wire mesh fence before finally plunged into the canal.
The car’s momentum was so high that it yanked a concrete pillar, holding up one side of the fence, out of the ground. The accident took place about 300 metres from the Hindon canal.
The driver of the Ritz, 21-year-old Noida resident Sushant Saxena, was arrested. He was returning home after attending classes in Modinagar’s SRM College, where he is a 4th year student of engineering. Two girls, students of the same college, were also in the car.
The kids were identified as Prateek (4) and Kartik (5). The man at the wheel, Vinit, was their uncle. Their mother, Vintia, was also travelling with them. Both Vinit and Vinita managed to swim to safety, police said. They are residents of Khoda Colony and were returning from Meerut.
Rajesh Sharma of Indirapuram police station, the investigating officer, said, “A speeding Maruti Ritz sideswiped Vinit’s car in an attempt to overtake him at the turn leading towards Indirapuram. Police divers later fished out the kids’ bodies from the canal.”