Ludhiana: Two people had to be hospitalised after an ambulance attached to the Punjab governor’s security convoy rammed a private SUV at a highway toll booth.The collision occurred at about 8am on Monday at the Ghulal Toll Plaza near Samrala, shortly after the governor’s main motorcade crossed the gates on its way from Chandigarh to Ludhiana.Police claim that a trailing emergency vehicle from a Samrala govt hospital — operating as part of the convoy’s relay escort — struck a Toyota Innova from behind.The impact was severe enough to injure a passenger in the car, Gurjeet Kaur of Ludhiana, and an emergency medical technician inside the ambulance, Gurjant Singh of Tarn Taran. Teams from the state’s Road Safety Force (Sadak Suraksha Force) extricated the victims and moved them to a local hospital.Police and the car’s driver have offered conflicting accounts of how the private vehicle entered the high-security lane.Superintendent of police Darpan Ahluwalia said the car had entered the lane reserved exclusively for the VIP convoy abruptly. When officers at the plaza moved in to halt the vehicle, the driver braked suddenly, leaving the trailing ambulance insufficient space to stop.Ahluwalia ruled out any intentional security breach, characterising the incident as an accident. However, the car driver, Surinder Singh, told reporters he was travelling with his mother and wife and had no idea a VIP motorcade was in the area.He claimed that after the primary security vehicles had passed, a toll plaza employee had waved his car into the convoy’s lane. “I stopped at the booth to pay the toll, and that was when the ambulance trailing the governor’s convoy rammed us from behind,” he said.Investigators have seized CCTV footage from the toll plaza to resolve the conflicting accounts and determine if safety protocols were breached by toll staff.
