Varanasi: 12 persons, including four women and four minors, were killed in Dramandganj area of Mirzapur district on Wednesday night. Of them, nine were travelling in an SUV that turned into a fireball after collision. Locals and drivers of other vehicles said that they tried to rescue them but failed due to the very high intensity of flames and heat.Chief minister Yogi Adityanath termed the loss of lives in this road accident extremely tragic and heart-rending. Extending condolences to the bereaved families of deceased persons, he directed officials to ensure all help to those families.Mirzapur district magistrate Pawan Kumar Gangwar on Thursday said that during the collision of multiple vehicles, a total of 11 persons were killed on the spot, while injured truck driver Aziz, 53, of Rajatgarh, MP, died during the course of treatment at hospital early morning. The persons killed on the spot were identified as Piyush Singh, 14, his mother Veena Singh, 47, and sister Sonam, 9, Shiva Singh, 8, his mother Vandana Singh, 43, Pankaj Singh, 40, Vishnu Singh, 45, all from Jigna area of Mirzapur district, Priyanka Singh, 42, and her son Kartikeya Singh, 18, of Satna, Jai Prakash, 27, of Robertsganj, Sonbhadra, and Vikas Sharma, 32, of Sagar, MP.A financial relief of Rs2 lakh for each deceased was announced from the CM Relief Fund, said the DM, mentioning that bodies of the deceased were handed over to their families after post-mortem examination.The accident occurred on the steep slope of Badka Ghuman area of Dramandganj around 8.20pm on Wednesday. Officials said that the police investigation in this incident cleared that after brake failure, a truck (MP15HA3775) coming down the slope hit a car (UP65MT4038) and trailer vehicle (BR24GC7990) moving before it. In the next few seconds, an SUV (UP63AC5589) hit the truck from the rear side and caught fire.The body of Munnar, driving the car, was crushed severely between the two trucks, and cutters were arranged to extract it. The drivers of trucks coming behind the SUV recalled that on seeing the collision of multiple vehicles, they stopped their vehicles and ran for rescue. But only in 5-6 seconds of the collision, the SUV turned into a fireball following an explosion, they said, mentioning that they could not act to open the doors of the SUV because of the very high intensity of flames and heat, due to which all nine on board, who were relatives and returning home in Mirzapur after completing rituals of mundan at Maihar in MP, were charred to death.Had the SUV driver managed to control the vehicle in time, the nine people on board might have survived, said the locals. It is also suspected that brakes of the truck, which hit a car and another truck moving before it, failed as its driver had switched off the engine to save fuel.
