A 19-year-old student driving a Jaguar F-PACE allegedly knocked down a woman after hitting a Swift Dzire and a BMW on Ballygunge Circular Road in south Kolkata on Sunday afternoon.
The deceased has been identified as Saswati Das, 40, a resident of VIP Bazar in Anandapur, off EM Bypass in east Kolkata.
Suyash Parasrampuria, 19, who was allegedly at the wheel of the Jaguar, was arrested after being questioned for over an hour at Ballygunge police station. Officers said a woman was accompanying Suyash, a resident of south Kolkata, in the car.
Suyash Parasrampuria, who police said was driving the Jaguar. Sanat Kr Sinha
Das, the victim, was waiting to cross the road when she came between the speeding Jaguar and the BMW, police said. Officers found her in a pool of blood and rushed her to a hospital nearby, where she was declared dead.
Eyewitnesses told the police that the Jaguar was moving at a very high speed. Suyash, a Class XII student, has been booked for causing death due to negligence under Section 304 of the Indian Penal Code. If convicted, he can be jailed for up to 10 years.
The BMW. Sanat Kr Sinha
The police said the Jaguar took a right turn from AJC Bose Road and was moving down Ballygunge Circular Road around 3.50pm when it hit the Swift Dzire on its rear right side. The car was moving so fast that the Dzire, which was headed towards Ballygunge, turned 180 degrees under the impact of the collision and started moving in the opposite direction, the police said.
The Dzire had no occupants other than the driver, who was not hurt.
Unable to control the speed of the Jaguar, Suyash then allegedly went on to hit a BMW, which was parked close to a petrol station opposite Vrindavan Apartments. The BMW, which had no occupant, had a part of its right front fender ripped off and its bonnet twisted, the police said.
“The woman was standing close to the BMW, waiting to cross the road. She got trapped between the Jaguar and the BMW and was crushed,” said a police officer. “When we reached the spot, she was lying in a pool of blood on the roadside.”
The Swift Dzire. Sanat Kr Sinha
The Jaguar came to a halt after its Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) system got activated and the airbags deployed under the impact of the two collisions, forensic experts said.
“We have seized the Jaguar and will examine the black box to find the exact speed at which it was travelling when the collisions took place,” said Sunil Kumar Yadav, deputy commissioner of police, traffic. “The driver had a valid driving licence.”
Police sources said the car was registered with the public vehicles department in July 2019. “It has no pending traffic case. But the car’s insurance expired this month and the pollution certificate, too, has lapsed,” said an officer.
Automobile experts said a Jaguar F-PACE comes fitted with a series of safety features, including systems to monitor traffic signs and the driver’s condition, a speed-limiter and a surround camera system.
Officers at Ballygunge police station said the car would undergo several tests on Monday to help them understand whether any mechanical failure was responsible for the back-to-back collisions.
Documents available with the police have revealed that the Jaguar is registered in the name of Parasrampuria Projects Limited. This company is in realty business and has its registered office on Jamuna Lal Bajaj Street. Suresh Kumar Parasrampuria, Pankaj Parasrampuria and Sanjay Kumar Agarwal are the three directors of the company.
When The Telegraph contacted Pankaj Parasrampuria, he took the call but hung up after listening to the query.
Three years back, in August 2019, a speeding Jaguar had knocked down two Bangladeshi nationals and injured a third at the crossing of Shakespeare Sarani and Loudon Street, adjoining Shakespeare Sarani police station. One of the sons of the owner of a popular biryani chain in Kolkata was driving the Jaguar, which was also of the F-PACE category.