All that Shweta Singh remembered about the frightening accident that killed her mother Asha Devi at Bollaram on this January 1 was a white car with the registration number 6037.
With that vague clue, she was not sure if the person responsible for her mother’s death could be caught. Exactly a week after the hit-and-run case was reported, the investigators traced the car and its driver with the help of a broken side mirror of the car lying at the accident spot.
A 22-year-old M.Tech student D. Bharadwaj of Neredmet, who claimed that he was returning home after a long drive with two friends on the eve of New Year, was responsible for the death, the police said. He was arrested two days ago and produced before a local court.
Recalling the tragic death, Ms. Singh said she and her mother in her late 50s started for a walk around 6.30 a.m. on January 1 from their house in Dovetown.
They were passing by the compound wall of the St. Ann’s Home on Bollarum main road when the white car menacingly came from opposite direction.
Even as the scared woman alerted her mother to be cautious, the car rushed to the extreme left. It first hit Ms. Singh and then rammed her mother, throwing the latter onto the St. Ann’s Home premises over the four-foot-high compound wall.
Ms. Singh suffered fractures, while death was instant for her mother.
As Ms. Singh maintained the car looked like white Swift Dzire, the investigators began collecting data of cars of that make and colour.
The number ran into 100s making it difficult for the police to ascertain which vehicle fatally knocked down the victim.
When they took a broken right side mirror found at the accident spot to Maruti showroom, the technicians said it belonged to Ford Figo.
The date on the mirror read June 22, 2012 indicating that it was purchased around that time.
“Inquiries with the Khairatabad RTA office revealed that there were four white Ford cars registered during 2012,” the Bollarum Inspector T. Laxminarayana said.
After June 22, only one was registered and that was in the name of a techie Uma Jyothi of Chandanagar. Police knocked on the techie’s doors and found that her husband’s brother B. Mahasri Reddy, his friend J.V. Shashank, — both engineering students — travelled in that car on January 1 along with their common friend Bharadwaj.
