Palwal: 6 killed after van carrying pilgrims collides with truck on KMP eway
Pilgrim Van Slams Into Parked Truck on Delhi-Adjacent Expressway; Six Dead, Fourteen Wounded
Bharatmorningnews.com – Palwal – A group of Uttar Pradesh villagers travelling to Hindu temples across Rajasthan and western Uttar Pradesh paid the ultimate price for a single act of roadside negligence. Early Tuesday morning, a converted pick-up van loaded with pilgrims struck a truck that had been left parked on the shoulder of the Kundli-Manesar-Palwal (KMP) Expressway near Maheshpur village in Palwal district, Haryana. At least six people died in the crash, and fourteen more sustained injuries severe enough to require hospitalisation.
The KMP Expressway, a major arterial route linking western Delhi with the Punjab corridor through Haryana, carries heavy commercial and passenger traffic around the clock. Its design assumes continuous flow, which makes any stationary vehicle on the carriageway or shoulder a lethal hazard, particularly in the dim light of pre-dawn hours. The collision occurred at approximately 5:30 a.m., a window when visibility is poor and driver fatigue is at its peak.
Victims and Immediate Aftermath
Police identified the six fatalities as Vijay Singh, Raj Kumar, Reshma Devi, Kamla Devi, Sudha, and Mahesh. All fourteen injured passengers were rushed to the civil hospital in Palwal, where several were listed in critical condition. Hospital staff indicated that some of the more seriously wounded would need transfer to larger facilities with advanced trauma and surgical capability.
The force of the impact, according to a senior police officer on the scene, completely destroyed the Bolero van. Multiple passengers were pinned inside the crumpled cabin and required between twenty and forty minutes of cutting and extrication work before rescuers could pull them free.
The Truck Driver Vanishes
Inspector Hari Kishan, station house officer at Palwal Sadar police station, described what happened in the seconds after the crash.
“Soon after the collision, the driver of the illegally parked truck started the vehicle and sped away from the spot leaving behind all the injured victims.”
Kishan added that investigators were combing through CCTV footage along the expressway to capture the truck’s registration number, which would allow them to identify the driver and bring him before a magistrate.
“We are scanning CCTV camera footage of the expressway to trace the truck’s registration number to ascertain the identity of the driver and trace him,”
he said, confirming that a first information report was being prepared against the fleeing driver.
Who Were the Pilgrims and Where Were They Bound?
Police reconstructed the journey from witness statements and vehicle records. At least twenty residents of Kishanpur Muraiya, Makoaya, Chanda, and adjoining villages in Mainpuri district, Uttar Pradesh, had pooled money to hire the van for a multi-day religious circuit. To accommodate the group overnight, the rear cargo area of the Bolero had been fitted with two sleeping decks — a common but unregulated practice among rural pilgrimage groups that turns a goods vehicle into a makeshift bus.
The itinerary had taken the group to the Khatu Shyam temple in Sikar district and the Salasar Balaji temple in Churu district, both in Rajasthan, on Monday. By Tuesday dawn they were heading east toward Mathura and the town of Vrindavan, passing through Palwal on the KMP Expressway, when the truck in their path ended the trip.
Emergency Response and Ongoing Investigation
Within minutes of the crash, multiple ambulances, police units, and National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) patrol teams converged on the scene. The combined effort focused first on cutting trapped passengers from the wreck, then on stabilising and transporting the wounded. Some of the injured were in critical condition on arrival at Palwal civil hospital, and authorities indicated that inter-hospital transfers would follow once patients were stabilised.
The case has drawn attention to a recurring pattern on Indian expressways: commercial trucks stopping on shoulders or medians for driver rest, fuel, or mechanical checks without deploying warning triangles or hazard lights. In the pre-dawn hours, a dark truck silhouette against a grey sky is nearly invisible to an approaching vehicle travelling at expressway speed. The fact that the truck had been parked illegally — outside any designated lay-by or rest area — compounds the question of liability and underscores the need for stricter enforcement of parking rules on high-speed corridors.
Police in Palwal said the investigation would proceed on two tracks: identifying and apprehending the truck driver through CCTV and registration records, and examining whether the van’s conversion into a passenger-carrying vehicle met any regulatory requirements. No further details on the van’s registration or the operator’s licence had been released as of Tuesday morning.
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