Family of eight, on way to see Taj Mahal, killed in road accident

Mathura (UP): Eight members of a Greater Noida family on their way to the Taj Mahal were killed when their car rammed into a truck on the Yamuna Expressway in Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura district on Sunday, police said.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath condoled the deaths and extended his sympathies to the kin of the victims, an official statement from his office said in Lucknow. Five members of the family from Jewar in Gautam Buddh Nagar district died on the spot when their car rammed into the truck moving ahead of it around 8.30 am in the Baldeo police station area, about 30 km from Mathura city.

The deceased have been identified as Neeraj (30), Anita (30), Vishnu (23), Taruna (21), Santoshi (19), Shalu (20), Anjali (11) and Gabbar (24), the police officer said. The bodies have been sent for post-mortem. The truck driver fled with his vehicle from the spot after the accident, the officer said.

The 165-km-long Yamuna Expressway, connecting Greater Noida with Agra, has witnessed hundreds of deaths in road accidents over the years, with officials saying that many of them occurred due to overspeeding.

Last Tuesday, three men returning from a wedding function in Aligarh to their homes in Ghaziabad died on the expressway in Greater Noida after their speeding car crashed into a truck, the police had said.

On May 16, 10 college students were hospitalised after the van carrying them to their campus for examination crashed on the expressway in Greater Noida. Two of them had died later, the police had said.