A prominent leader of the Telugu Desam and former MP, Lal Jan Basha, was killed in a road mishap at Narketpally in Nalgonda district on Thursday morning. Basha, 56, was going to Guntur from Hyderabad in his Innova car when the vehicle rammed into a divider on National Highway 16, near Kamineni Y. junction at around 8.15 am.
While Basha died on the spot, the driver of the car was admitted to a private hospital with injuries.
The police said that the car was speeding and it was raining at the time of the accident. “The speedometer was stuck after the mishap, and it showed 140 km per hour. We suspect the driver lost control due to speeding on the wet road,” Nalgonda sub-division SDPO P. Vijaya Kumar said.
Eyewitnesses said that when the car hit the divider and suddenly stopped, Basha, who was sitting on the left side, was thrown out of the vehicle and hit his head on the road.
The iron crash barrier on the divider pierced the vehicle and cut Basha’s right leg. “His foot got detached and was stuck inside the vehicle while his body was thrown out,” Mr Kumar said.
The airbags of the Innova (registration number- AP 15 AM 789) inflated properly. The police suspects that Basha was not wearing a seat-belt at the time of the accident. The police says the driver was not seriously injured because he was wearing a seat-belt.
The police has registered a case against driver Muzaffar Iqbal for causing death due to negligence (IPC Section 304 A) following a complaint from Basha’s son Gayaz Basha.