Joy turns to mourning after Bolero with wedding guests overturns in ditch; 5 dead, including a child
Lohaghat/Champawat (The Uttam Hindu): A horrific road accident in Uttarakhand's Champawat district early Friday morning turned the joy of a wedding into mourning. A Bolero car full of wedding guests lost control and fell into a deep gorge near Barakot in Lohaghat on the national highway. Five people died on the spot in this tragic accident, while five others were seriously injured. The deceased included a six-year-old child and a woman.
According to reports, on December 4th, a wedding procession from Ganai Gangoli (Seraghat) in Pithoragarh district arrived in Balatari village in the Pati block of Champawat. After the wedding rituals were completed, the procession was happily returning home. The accident occurred
at Bagdhar, near Barakot. Due to darkness, the driver lost control and the car fell into a deep ravine.
The bodies were retrieved with great difficulty.
Upon receiving information about the accident, police and SDRF teams reached the spot early Friday morning. Due to the depth of the ditch, rescue operations were quite difficult. After a lot of effort, the soldiers pulled out the injured and the bodies. All five injured have been admitted to the Lohaghat sub-district hospital for treatment. The cause of the accident is not yet clear; the police are investigating the matter.
All those killed
in the tragic accident were members of the same family and relatives. Prakash Chand Uniyal (40), Kewal Chandra Uniyal (35), and Suresh Nautiyal (32), residents of Subhash Nagar in Rudrapur, were among those killed. Bhavna Chaubey, 28, and her 6-year-old son, Priyanshu Chaubey, also died on the spot. The injured included driver Devidutt Pandey (38, a resident of Seraghat, Almora), Prakash Chand's 12-year-old son, Dhiraj Uniyal, Rajesh Joshi (14), a resident of Bankot, Chetan Chaubey (5), a resident of Delhi, and Bhaskar Panda, a resident of Seraghat, who are undergoing treatment at the hospital. This heartbreaking incident has cast a pall of grief over the villages of both the bride and groom.