Bengaluru: “I’ll be home after handing over one last wedding invitation,” 28-year-old Sindhushree NS told her parents before leaving for Kathriguppe on Wednesday afternoon. But she never returned. Just days before her wedding, the bride-to-be and her 19-year-old cousin, Vidya N, were crushed to death by a container truck. Thursday was supposed to be her haldi ceremony, marking the beginning of her wedding, but instead, her family was left preparing for her funeral.The duo were riding a scooter near Kimko Junction on Mysuru Road when a container truck hit the scooter and ran over them while taking a U-turn.“Today was supposed to be her haldi ceremony and tomorrow the bangle ceremony. We were supposed to go to the wedding hall. Everything is over now.” These were the heartbreaking words of Nanjundappa, father of 28-year-old Sindhushree, who died in the accident. Recalling his daughter, Nanjundappa broke down while speaking to the media. “It was a huge truck. I have only one daughter, besides my younger sister’s daughter. We lost both,” he said Thursday.The tragedy also triggered outrage among the victims’ relatives, who questioned the movement of heavy vehicles in the city during daytime and accused police of failing to enforce traffic rules. However, police clarified that the accident happened at 3.33 pm. Heavy vehicles are allowed in the city until 4 pm, and there were no lapses.A relative, Shankrappa, said Sindhushree’s father is an autorickshaw driver and the family had been living in the area for nearly 20 years. With the wedding approaching, relatives had come to Bengaluru from their native place. Sindhushree’s mother had also gone to their hometown, and the bride-to-be was expected to join them on Thursday.However, she had remembered that she had not given a wedding invitation to one of her friends and borrowed a neighbour’s two-wheeler to deliver it. “If the truck driver had applied the brakes, she could have survived. There were wedding celebrations ahead, but everything has ended this way,” Shankrappa said.Meanwhile, the bodies of Sindhushree and Vidya were handed over to the family after postmortems at Victoria Hospital.Sindhushree’s mother was inconsolable, mourning the daughter whose wedding she had been preparing to celebrate. “We were supposed to shower her with rice grains as part of the wedding rituals. Instead, we are now in a position where we have to shower rice grains on our daughter’s body,” family members, including her mother, lamented.The Byatarayanapura police are collecting CCTV camera footage covering the route from the time Sindhushree and Vidya left their house until they reached the accident spot. The truck driver is still at large, and efforts are on to nab him. Sindhushree, a resident of Shankaranagar in Nandini Layout, was working in a software company, while Vidya, a resident of Nagarabhavi, was a college student. “We will issue a notice to the scooter owner, from whom Sindhushree had borrowed the vehicle, for further investigation. We are yet to find out if Sindhushree had a driving licence,” police said.
