Police have identified the goods vehicle that had fatally hit 20-year-old air hostess Rittika Majumdar near Hastings before fleeing last week and arrested the driver.

“Bishnu Paswan, 41, the driver, has been arrested from his BK Pal Avenue house. He has been charged with causing death due to negligence, under Section 304 of the Indian Penal Code,” said an officer.

Rittika, a resident of Howrah, was returning home with a friend on a scooter when the accident happened last Tuesday. Investigating officers learned that the scooter was trailing an app cab, whose driver suddenly pressed the brakes.

“With the app cab suddenly coming to a halt, the two-wheeler got disbalanced. The scooterist as well as Rittika, who was riding pillion, fell on the road. Before they could get up, a goods vehicle that was behind them ran over the woman,” said an officer.

A case against an “unknown” vehicle was initially started.

As there were no CCTV cameras on the spot, the police had to initially depend on statements of Rittika’s friend, who was driving the scooter, to form an idea about the goods vehicle. Footage of CCTV cameras close to the accident spot did show a goods vehicle cross the stretch within a few minutes of the accident.

The vehicle, which was carrying cardboards to a factory in Dhulagarh in Howrah, was identified and its owner tracked down. The police learnt the name of the driver from the owner.

Several offending vehicles that cause accidents and flee the spot remain unidentified in the absence of CCTV camera footage or statements from witnesses.

The accident that led to the death of the air hostess is one of the few cases in which the police have been able to identify the killer vehicle and track down the driver despite the absence of CCTV cameras at the crash site.

Last year, offending vehicles in around 40 road accidents had remained unidentified.

Officers in the traffic department said that if the offending vehicle remained unidentified, the victim and his or her relatives found it difficult to claim the accident insurance money.

“Apart from the insurance issue, getting to know the identity of the offending vehicle means a lot to the family of a person who dies in a road accident,” an officer said.