Hyderabad, March 26: Five persons, including four women, were killed after an escort car in Union minister of state for defence M.M. Pallam Raju’s convoy hit an autorickshaw in Andhra Pradesh today, police said.
Seven persons, including three policemen in the escort vehicle, were injured, with one of them said to be critical, the police said. The minister, travelling in another car in the convoy, was not hurt, the police said.
Both the autorickshaw, which the police claimed was overloaded and was coming from the opposite direction, and the convoy vehicle were badly damaged in the accident at Perumallapuram in East Godavari, 740km from Hyderabad. The injured have been admitted to government hospital in nearby Kakinada town, officials said.
Raju stepped out to help, ensuring the injured were rushed to hospital in the other vehicles of his convoy, but had to face angry relatives of the victims who rushed to the spot from nearby villages.
“It is tragic that reckless driving has taken away so many lives,” said Prabhakar Rao, a relative of one of the victims as he blockaded the convoy for over two hours along with 500 villagers demanding proper compensation.
The minister said he would appeal to the government to treat this as a special case and provide adequate compensation. But the families were not convinced. They staged a dharna and didn’t allow the bodies to be taken for post-mortem. They relented only after appeals from local Congress and Praja Rajyam MLAs.
Raju was on his way to attend a programme in his Lok Sabha constituency Kakinada from Visakhapatnam airport.
Last month, six persons were killed after the autorickshaw in which they were travelling collided with an escort vehicle of Bhatti Vikramarka, the chief whip of the ruling Congress in the Assembly, in Nalgonda district.
-PTI