Car mows down 4 in Indiranagar

Car mows down 4 in Indiranagar
DH News Service,Bangalore:
In a chilling re-run of the tragedies wrecked by some of the more infamous cases of drunken driving in Delhi and Mumbai, three morning walkers and a cyclist were run over by a heavily drunk youth at the wheel, in Indiranagar on Saturday morning.

The tragedy happened just five minutes past 6 am as Karthik Somaiah, a 29-year-old marketing operations manager at Sercon in the city, was driving back to his residence in Indiranagar after a night-long drinking session with his friends in Koramangala.

As he drove past the Indiranagar flyover and approached the 100 Feet Road at high speed under the influence of liquor, he seemingly lost control of his Honda Accord. At the B M Shree Circle, Karthik slammed first a cyclist, Siddaiah (69), killing him on the spot. Siddaiah was a security guard.

By then he seemed to have lost total control of the wheel. The vehicle steered towards the left to climb the footpath. The car ran over a group of four morning walkers — Dr Ramanath Panathur (73), a resident of CMH Road, Indiranagar; Kempegowda (76), a civil contractor; Radhakrishna (66), a resident of Babasab Colony, Doopanahalli and Kodandarama Reddy (63), a retired professor. The first three died on the spot while Reddy luckily survived with severe injuries on his legs.

“As usual we were walking and suddenly I heard a thud; by the time I could look back, a black car rammed into us and I saw my friends writhing in pain and profusely bleeding and crying out for help,” said Reddy who has been admitted to the Manipal Hospital. They were doing the morning walk together for almost two decades, Reddy said. His three friends weren’t as lucky as Reddy.

Karthik then fled the scene of the tragedy, leaving his car there. The police later gave the identity and registration number of the car — a black Honda Accord bearing the registration number KA-01-MD-8. He is a resident of 21/123 MIG flat ‘E’ Block, Indiranagar.

By evening, however, the police traced Karthik who subsequently surrendered before the Shivajinagar police. He was accompanied to the police station by his father K M Somaiah, a naval officer, and a battery of lawyers.

According the police, Karthik confessed, saying he “overstayed in my friend’s place in Koramangala and was heading home. While trying to avoid the cyclist, the accident happened.”

While investigations were on, it was found that even 12 hours after the early morning tragedy inflicted by him, Karthik’s blood sample contained very clear traces of alcohol.

Obviously, he was dead drunk when he took to the wheel in the morning. “Even 12 hours after the accident, alcohol traces were evident in Karthik’s blood samples,” Additional Commissioner of Police (traffic) Praveen Sood told newspersons in the evening.

The other high profile cases are the BMW case where Sanjeev Nanda, grandson of ex- Navy chief S M Nanda killed six people, including three policemen, when he drove his car at a high-speed through the police checkpoint in Delhi, in 1999. He was sentenced to five years in prison.

In another instance, actor Salman Khan allegedly rammed his vehicle into a bakery on September 28, 2002 in suburban Bandra (Mumbai) killing one person and injuring four others.

Salman was arrested on the same day on the charge of causing death by negligence and granted bail.
On November 12, 2006, Alistair Perreira in an inebriated condition ran his car over sleeping construction workers, killing seven labourers and injuring eight in Mumbai.