A crowd had gathered in the dark on a village road in eastern India to pull a scooter rider out of the bushes when a trailer truck came around the bend behind them.
A speeding 18-wheel trailer truck ran over a group of people standing on the Karra-Torpa main road in Khunti district, Jharkhand, killing at least seven and injuring one, police said Friday, Nov. 6, 2026.
The truck struck the group on Thursday night, Nov. 5. Six of the victims died at the scene, and a seventh died during treatment. Khunti Superintendent of Police Rishabh Garg said the dead were three women, three children and one man, and that the truck came from the Torpa side and ran the crowd over as it negotiated a sharp turn. The driver and the cleaner fled, leaving the trailer at the site.
The Scooter in the Bushes
Eyewitnesses said the sequence began with a scooter that ran off the road and into bushes at the shoulder at around 9:30 p.m. near Jone-Ludru Morh, on the Karra-Torpa stretch. Residents of a nearby colony and passers-by came out after hearing the noise, and some of them set to work pulling the rider free. Women and children stood at the edge of the road, watching.
The 18-wheeler then came out of the dark from the Torpa side, lost control and hit the people on the shoulder. It broke through a culvert and plunged into a ditch, on the stretch that runs toward Karra Railway Station.
He Lost Four While Working in Gujarat
Birsa Nayak, a resident of Karra, lost three relatives — his wife, Kasila Devi; his daughter Anjali; and his one-year-old grandchild, Saurabh. Nayak said his other daughter, Khushboo, was seriously hurt and is undergoing treatment at Khunti Sadar Hospital.
Another family lost four. Rajesh, who was working as a laborer in Gujarat at the time, lost his wife, Fagan Sanga; his mother, Karmi Lohrain; and his two daughters, Subhani Kumari and Soni Kumari. He was informed about the accident afterward, hundreds of miles from the road.
Why the Driver Did Not See Them
Investigators say preliminary information points to the darkness and the sharp bend as the reasons the driver did not see the people on the road. “The driver might not have seen the crowd due to darkness,” Garg said.
Police teams are conducting raids to arrest the driver and the cleaner. Officers seized the vehicle and sent the bodies for post-mortem examination.
Karra police station in-charge Raju Kumar reached the spot soon after the first information came in, along with police personnel and health workers from the community health center in Karra. An injured child was taken there first and then referred to Khunti Sadar Hospital after doctors found the child’s condition critical. Garg went to the hospital late at night to check on the injured.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered condolences to the families who lost relatives in Khunti and prayed for the quick recovery of the injured, in a message his office posted on X on Nov. 6.
Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren said he was deeply saddened by the news of seven deaths in a road accident in Karra and offered condolences to every grieving family. “May Marang Buru grant peace to the souls of the departed,” Soren wrote.
Police are still working to establish the full circumstances of the crash.
From Narsinghpur to Bikaner District
In a separate case reported on July 20, 2026, a speeding dumper, allegedly driven recklessly, killed four youths and critically injured two others on the Jabalpur-Bhopal National Highway in Narsinghpur, Madhya Pradesh, within Suatala police station limits. The victims had stopped at a tea stall while returning from a picnic at Hathinala Waterfall. Jaipal Lodhi, 30, of Barpati village died on the spot. Additional SP Narsinghpur Sandeep Bhuria said the driver fled and CCTV footage is under examination.
In another case reported Jan. 1, 2026, a trailer struck a roadside auto and a pickup on the Deshnok-Norangdesar route of the Bharatmala Highway, in the Napasar police station area of Bikaner district, around midnight. Four people died on the spot and four others were injured, and one more died at PBM Hospital in Bikaner around 3 a.m. The trailer driver reportedly fled the scene.
