Merchant Navy engineer dies in mysterious Bareilly hit-&-run case

Meerut/Bareilly: A 25-year-old Merchant Navy maintenance engineer, home on leave, was killed in a suspected hit-and-run accident in Bareilly Cantonment area in the early hours of Monday.

While the victim’s family has alleged a planned conspiracy, his friend, who survived the crash with minor bruises, claimed he was knocked unconscious and was completely unaware that the engineer had died.Victim Rishi Arvindo Kar, a resident of Nawada Jogiyan, worked for a private shipping company and was the only child of his parents. According to reports, Rishi and his friend, Shubham Pathak (32), had dinner together and left on a scooter around 1 am on Monday.

Soon, a speeding truck allegedly rammed their scooter from behind, throwing both riders on the road near Veerangana Chowk and sped away.A police team on patrolling duty found Rishi’s mutilated body on the roadside. Unable to identify him immediately, authorities circulated his photograph across local social media networks. Meanwhile, Pathak claimed he regained consciousness after the crash, failed to see Rishi anywhere at the spot and rode home on the damaged scooter.

It took nearly 14 hours for Rishi’s family to learn about the tragedy after receiving a call from the police mortuary on Monday evening.Suspecting foul play, Rishi’s family contested the sequence of events. “How is it possible that two men meet with an accident, and one simply returns home without finding the other? He could have at least informed us,” argued the deceased’s uncle, Mehir Kar.“There is something fishy here. We are checking bank accounts and other details, as Rishi may have loaned him some money.

We are in the process of filing a formal police complaint,” said Kar.Speaking from a hospital bed, Pathak refuted the allegations of a conspiracy. “I myself lost consciousness for a while, and when I regained my senses, Rishi was nowhere to be seen. I even called our friends and tried to locate him. After that, I picked up the damaged scooter and reached home,” he told reporters.“Initially, the deceased was unidentified. After circulating his photograph through WhatsApp groups, we received a tip from an informer that the victim had been traveling with another person, Shubham Pathak, who was admitted to a private hospital following a road accident.

A police team immediately reached the hospital, where Shubham recounted the sequence of events, enabling us to establish the identity of the deceased and inform his family,” said Sanjay Dheer, SHO of Bareilly Cantt police station.The postmortem report revealed that Rishi suffered eight grievous injuries and died from hemorrhagic shock. Police are currently examining CCTV footage from the area to identify the fleeing truck and ascertain the exact sequence of events.