Five men, including powerlifting world champion Saksham Yadav, died and one other person was injured after their car met with an accident in the early hours of Sunday, 7 January, near the Delhi-Haryana border, police said.
Saksham Yadav, who was admitted in an "extremely critical" condition at the AIIMS Trauma Centre in Delhi, succumbed to his injuries in the evening.
"He died at 6:38 pm from a cardiac arrest," a senior doctor at the Trauma Centre said, adding that "the family told us that he was revived twice at the Max Hospital (Shalimar Bagh)”, where he was initially taken for treatment.
He had sustained grievous head injuries and severe internal bleeding. He was being attended by a team of doctors, the doctor said.
The accident took place at around 4 am, near Alipur village of Delhi, close to the Singhu border between Delhi and Haryana.
The victims were travelling on the Delhi-Panipat National Highway-1 in a Maruti Suzuki Swift Dzire car.
According to the police, the driver lost control of the speeding vehicle. It first hit a divider and then crashed into an electricity pole. Due to severe impact, the car’s roof was blown away.
Yadav had won a gold medal for the country in the 2017 powerlifting championship in Moscow,
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Rohini) Rajneesh Gupta said the other deceased were identified as Tikamchand, Saurabh, Akash and Harish Roy.
The injured was identified as Rohit, he said.
A friend of Yadav had earlier said that he was in a critical state:
It was Rohit's birthday and the friends were celebrating it, the police said.
It is being probed whether it is a case of drunken driving since there were some liquor bottles found in the vehicle, the police said.
As per a report in The Times of India, police have registered a case of negligent driving and are also scanning the CCTV footage recorded near Singhu border to determine the cause of the mishap.
(With inputs from IANS and PTI.)
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