A trip to Tirupati took a tragic turn for a family from Himachal Pradesh when a child was knocked down by a speeding vehicle on Saturday. The hit-and-run incident took place nearly the Areva traffic signal on Grand Southern Trunk Road at Pallavaram around 5 a.m.
Dinesh Kumar, an agent of Life Insurance Corporation and a native of Himachal Pradesh, had come to Chennai with his wife and their two sons, four-and-a-half-year-old Naman and Aman (2). Dinesh and his family stayed with his younger brother Anil Kumar, a soldier, at the Pallavaram Army Camp.
They had planned to visit Tirupati on Saturday and left home early in the morning for Pallavaram railway station from where they planned to proceed to Park railway station and then, to Central where they were scheduled to board a train at 6.15 a.m. They were crossing GST Road near the signal when a speeding vehicle hit Naman, killing him on the spot. According to St. Thomas Mount Traffic Police (Investigation), the unidentified vehicle had swerved to the right to avoid hitting one of the children in the group who had darted across the road and knocked down Naman in the process. The vehicle sped away.
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Due to poor visibility, no one clearly saw the vehicle. The boy’s father Dinesh Kumar was also injured but was discharged after treatment at a private hospital in Chromepet.
Motorists, after crossing the traffic signal at the intersection of GST Road and Pammal Main Road, tend to speed up towards Guindy as they approach two signals – near Cantonment School and Areva factory. Similarly, vehicles coming from Guindy in the direction of Tambaram travel at high speed. Policemen recalled previous incidents in the recent past when three students were killed in two accidents around Areva signal due to overspeeding.