A 30-year-old Army havildar was killed and another soldier sustained critical injuries on Monday afternoon after a speeding trailer slammed into a stationary military truck on the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway near Kota.
The crash occurred at 2:15 pm within the Sultanpur police station perimeter, roughly 40 kilometres outside Kota city. Havildar Narayan Lal, a native of Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh stationed with an Army unit in Kota, died after being dragged beneath the vehicle's rear axle during the impact. A second soldier, 35-year-old Deepak, suffered serious trauma in the collision.
The collision was violent. The heavy trailer, hauling empty gas cylinders at high speed, struck the rear of the parked military truck without braking as the convoy halted near the Jalimpura toll plaza. The force of the strike vaulted one of the Army truck's tyres onto a concrete roadside barrier, hurling dozens of metal gas cylinders across the expressway lanes. Lal, caught in the crushed rear section, died before medical teams could intervene.
Police teams from the Sultanpur station reached the toll stretch within minutes, cordoning off the debris and shifting both soldiers to the local community health centre. Attending doctors pronounced Lal dead on arrival. Paramedics immediately transferred Deepak to the Army Hospital in Kota for emergency surgical care. Doctors completed an autopsy on Lal's body late Monday afternoon before releasing his remains to military authorities for formal transit to his hometown.
Officers impounded the damaged trailer, cleared the expressway lanes for traffic, and detained the commercial driver at the scene.
"The military convoy was travelling out of Kota when one truck halted near Jalimpura," said Sultanpur Station House Officer Daulat Sahu. "The speeding trailer struck the rear end directly. We have taken the driver into custody, impounded the commercial vehicle, and registered a criminal case under applicable sections. A full reconstruction of the crash is currently underway."
Police investigators will inspect the commercial trailer's mechanical braking system on Tuesday and present the detained driver before a local magistrate for formal remand.