Two young men — one of them driving a car and the other sitting next to him — died after the vehicle hit a lorry coming from the opposite direction on Circular Garden Reach Road early on Tuesday, police said.
Three others, who were on the rear seat, suffered critical injuries and were admitted to hospital.
The incident happened when the group of friends was returning home after a get-together on Monday night.
The police said Ajay Giri, 23, who was at the wheel, was a driver by profession. Abhishek Gupta, 24, who was sitting next to him, looked after his father’s grocery store near their Rabindranagar home. The white Tata Indigo has a commercial number plate and Giri would drive it.
Abhishek Gupta
Sources said that according to the CCTV footage obtained by the police, the lorry was moving along the left side of the road following traffic rules. “The car suddenly steered to its right and rammed into the mudguard of the lorry around 2am,” said an officer of West Port police station, in whose area is the accident spot.
“The spot, Dhobitala crossing, was deserted when the accident happened,” an officer said.
Giri, Gupta and the three others in the car — Ravi Ram, Rudrapratap Singh and Sumit Sau — were taken to SSKM Hospital. Giri and Gupta were declared dead and the rest were admitted in a critical condition.
Family members of Singh and Sau later shifted them to another hospital.
The police suspect neither Giri nor Gupta was wearing a seat belt.
Ajay Giri
The lorry had just emptied its consignment near Metiabruz and was heading towards Garden Reach when the car allegedly crashed into it. The lorry driver has been arrested and booked under charges related to causing death due to negligence, rash and negligent driving.
Officers of the fatal squad of the traffic police, who are investigating the accident, said the bodies had been sent for post-mortem. “We will know whether the youth at the wheel was intoxicated or not after the post-mortem report comes,” an officer of the squad said.
The incident happened barely two days after two city youths jumped off the Vidyasagar Setu into the Hooghly with some of their friends capturing their “stunt” in a mobile video apparently meant for circulation in the social media. One of them failed to resurface on the water till Tuesday evening.