Date:05/06/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/06/05/stories/2007060515650400.htm

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

On first day of school, man, son die in accident

Meera Srinivasan

Two siblings escape with injuries in ECR accident

CHENNAI : On Monday morning the siblings went to school wearing bright smiles; it was time to meet friends after the summer vacation. Monday afternoon, the youngest of the three and their father were no more. Four-year-old Arbutaraj and his father Rajan (45) succumbed to a road accident on East Coast Road, on their way back home from school.

Arul Prabhu (7) and Chandanapriya (9), also students of St. Joseph's School, Vettuvankeni, were injured. The accident occurred at about 1.30 p.m. near Uthandi, where the school van dropped the three children and others living close by. Rajan, the owner of a small paper mart near Kanathur, picked up his children on his bicycle and was going home.

According to police sources, a van (from a private hospital in the area) came in the opposite direction. In an attempt to avoid a collision with an approaching bus, while overtaking another vehicle, the van driver is said to have gone to the extreme right of the road where he lost control and hit Rajan's cycle.

Doctors travelling in the hospital van immediately rushed the four to their hospital. The father and the youngest child were declared dead and their bodies were brought to the Government Royapettah Hospital for post-mortem on Monday evening.

Meanwhile, Chandanapriya who sustained minor injuries was treated at the private hospital and Arul Prabhu was referred to the Government General Hospital. He sustained a fracture in his right thigh and a minor head injury. On enquiry, doctors at the GH said that the CT scan ruled out brain injury. The fracture, they said, was expected to heal in a couple of weeks.

The mother of the child and her relatives waited anxiously at the GH. "Can you please enquire with someone if my husband and other children are okay?" the mother, possibly in her early twenties, asked helplessly. An attender from the school, who was helping them, said the family members were yet to be informed of the father and son's death. The grandmother of the children worked as an ayah in the same school, he said. An FIR has been registered at the Neelankarai police station. The van driver Danapalan has been arrested.