BETUL: Three men were killed and two others injured after their speeding car rammed into a crane parked along the roadside in Madhya Pradesh’s Betul district in the early hours of Tuesday, police said. The accident took place between 2.30am and 3am on Itarsi Road when the five were returning after having dinner at a dhaba, Kotwali police station house officer (SHO) Devkaran Dehriya said. “The car appears to have been driven at a high speed,” the SHO said. The impact left the vehicle completely mangled. Police had to break open the doors and windows to rescue those trapped inside, he added. The injured were rushed to the district hospital in a 108 ambulance and private vehicles, where doctors declared three of them dead. The deceased were identified as Hrithik Solanki (30), who was driving the vehicle, and his friends Varun Prajapati (21) and Abhay Thakur (22), all residents of Betul, Dehriya said. The injured, Deva Pandey (32) and Akash Pal (30), also from Betul, are undergoing treatment. One of them has been referred to a hospital in Nagpur, police said. Investigations are underway, and CCTV footage from the area is being scanned to ascertain the sequence of events, the officer added.
