An app cab driver who police suspect had dozed off rammed his vehicle into a truck parked along VIP Road early on Tuesday, suffering fatal injuries himself and leaving the lone passenger critically injured.

“Akhya Nayak, 42, the owner of the Ola cab who was at the wheel, seems to have dozed off and rammed the car into the truck at high speed around 4.30am,” said an officer of the commissionerate. “The truck was parked on the service road along the airport-bound flank of VIP Road near the Joramandir pedestrian subway, opposite Big Bazaar.”

Nayak was taken to a nursing home, where he was declared dead on arrival.

Nazrul Islam, 40, a sales representative of a pharmaceutical company, was on his way to the airport to catch a flight to Dibrugarh, when the accident occurred.

Police and firefighters took him to the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, from where he was shifted to Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals.

An official at Apollo said Islam had suffered head injuries and his condition was critical. “He underwent two surgeries, one for the blood clots in his brain and the other to remove bony fragments of the skull from his brain. He is on ventilation in the intensive care unit,” the official said.

App cabs often speed down VIP Road in the late or early hours taking advantage of slack police vigil and sparse traffic to complete a required number of trips to become eligible for incentives.

The impact of the Tuesday morning crash was such that the entire front portion of the white Maruti Suzuki Swift Dzire went under the truck. The roof of the car was ripped open and the engine and wheels got crumpled.

“The vehicle did not have airbags,” an officer of Baguiati police station said.

Nayak, a resident of Karl Marx Sarani in Kidderpore, was so badly trapped that the police had to call firefighters to extract him. The firefighters used gas-cutters to make room for Nayak’s rescue.

Islam, 40, who had booked the cab from his Garia home, was on the rear seat during the crash.

“We found his cellphone but it was locked with a password. So, we could not get in touch with his family. Around 7.30am, his wife called us and we told her about the accident,” the officer said. “We had taken him to RG Kar hospital but had to shift him to Apollo on advice of doctors.”

Islam’s wife Suchismita Majumder said her husband had been shifted to Apollo by the time she learned about the accident. “He underwent two operations that continued for several hours,” she said.

“We are trying to find out what led to the accident. The car will be subjected to a mechanical test,” the officer said.

On Monday morning, a 38-year-old woman who got off a bus at Teghoria and tried to run across VIP Road, instead of using a pedestrian subway, was fatally hit by another bus.