A 24-year-old national-level basketball player was killed and his wife was injured when their Mahindra Scorpio SUV collided head-on with a dumper truck on National Highway 309 near Pirumadara in Uttarakhand’s Ramnagar in the early hours of Friday, Oct. 2, 2026, police said.

The crash happened between 1:20 a.m. and 1:45 a.m. on Oct. 2, on a stretch of highway the couple had reached hours after setting out from home. They had left late on Thursday, Oct. 1, for Nainital in the Scorpio, traveling the Kashipur-Ramnagar route, according to the account the dead man’s father gave police.

Locals Alerted Police to the Wreck

Word of the collision came from residents near the highway, who told police that a truck had struck a car in the Pirumadara area. A police team was dispatched to the site, Ramnagar Station House Officer (SHO) Sushil Kumar said.

Officers took possession of the body and sent it for a postmortem examination. The injured woman was taken to a hospital, where family members arrived after receiving information about the accident.

A Father’s Account of the Collision

Suresh Yadav, the father of the deceased, alleged that the dumper truck, which was carrying minor minerals, moved onto the wrong side of the road while its driver was allegedly attempting to overtake another vehicle.

The speeding dumper then struck the Scorpio head-on, according to his account, overturning the SUV. The force of the impact trapped both husband and wife underneath the vehicle.

Suresh Yadav alleged that negligence by the dumper driver caused the crash. He has demanded an impartial investigation into the collision and strict action against those found responsible.

A Teacher, a Doctor and Four Months of Marriage

The man killed was identified as Yatish Yadav, a resident of Shahpur Bametha in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad. He was a national-level basketball player and worked as a teacher at a private school. His wife, Sheetal Yadav, is a doctor.

The couple had been married around four months, police said. The trip to Nainital, one of the hill stations most popular with travelers from the plains, was the journey that ended on the highway outside Ramnagar.

National Highway 309 is a main artery into the Kumaon hills, funneling tourist traffic from Uttar Pradesh and Delhi alongside the heavy commercial vehicles that haul sand, stone and other minor minerals out of the region’s riverbeds. The two streams of traffic share the same two lanes through stretches such as Pirumadara, often in the dark.

For now, the sequence of events that put a loaded dumper in the path of the Scorpio rests on the family’s account, and officers have not settled the question of who crossed the center line. The condition of the vehicles, the position of the wreckage and the movements of the truck in the minutes before impact are all part of what investigators are examining.

“A detailed investigation into the accident, including the role of the dumper and its driver, is underway,” police said.