The man behind the wheel in the fatal hit-and-run that took the life of celebrated marathoner Fauja Singh has been arrested in his hometown of Kartarpur. Punjab Police on Tuesday night apprehended Amritpal Singh Dhillon, a Non-Resident Indian who had recently returned from Canada.
The 30-year-old has admitted to driving the Toyota Fortuner that struck down the 114-year-old athlete in Punjab’s Jalandhar district. The vehicle, which was recovered by investigators within 30 hours of the incident, had been purchased by Dhillon two years ago from Ravindra Singh of Rurhampur.
The fatal accident occurred on Monday afternoon as Singh was walking near his village on the Jalandhar-Pathankot highway. He succumbed to his injuries later in the evening.
Police sources told that during interrogation, Dhillon stated he had been returning from Bhogpur after selling his phone when the vehicle hit Singh.
“Since the car was moving at a high speed, it hit Singh. Amritpal Singh fled the scene as he got scared,” the source quoted the accused as telling the police.
Villagers who witnessed the incident said the impact of the collision tossed Singh into the air by nearly 5 to 7 feet. One resident mentioned that the accident site was barely 400 metres from Singh’s home.
The case had initially been registered against an unidentified driver under Sections 281 (rash driving or riding on a public way) and 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
Also read: Marathon legend Fauja Singh dies in Punjab road accident
On Tuesday, Jalandhar Rural Senior Superintendent of Police Harvinder Singh told PTI, “We have identified the vehicle from CCTV footage. It is a Punjab-registered Toyota Fortuner. From the accident spot, we recovered some fragments of the vehicle’s headlight. After that, we tracked down the vehicle.”
The officer added that the recovered piece was from the left-side headlight and that its absence in the CCTV footage corroborated the physical evidence found at the scene.
“In the CCTV footage, the part of the vehicle, which was found at the accident spot, was missing. It was a left-side headlight fragment. The registration number was readable, which we tracked. It’s a vehicle whose owners have changed more than once (probably resale),” he said.
“Now, our teams will nab the driver soon and recover the vehicle,” the SSP had said, hours before the arrest was made.
Singh, often hailed as the oldest marathoner in the world, had become a global symbol of resilience and fitness. His sudden and tragic death has triggered an outpouring of grief from the athletic community and beyond.
Family sources on Tuesday informed that the last rites would be performed in a couple of days.
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