Drunk student triggers multiple mishaps in Adyar

CHENNAI: A 22-year-old engineering student was charged with drunken and rash driving after he caused multiple accidents in Adyar while at the wheel. It was around 6.10 pm, when a car zigzagged along the M G Road in Besant Nagar. Even as pedestrians jumped onto the pavement at the sight of the speeding car, it brushed past a flower vendor near the Adyar Anand Bhavan, hit another vehicle parked near the hotel from behind and rammed into an electric post before coming to a halt, a senior traffic official told Express.In the impact, sparks flew from the electric post causing injuries to flower seller K Uma (35). A resident of Nehru Street at Periyar Nagar in Thiruvanmiyur, Uma was rushed to a hospital soon after the incident. Another passerby, V Suresh (44), suffered minor injuries. According to sources, the driver and three other occupants of the car were thrashed up by the people in the area before they were handed over to the Adyar Traffic Investigation Police. “The driver was not only found to be inebriated, but was driving with one hand as he sported an artificial limb in the other,” the police officer said.Traffic police identified the driver as U Surender (22), a B Tech student in a private engineering college at Okkiyam in Thuraipakkam and son of Udayasuriyan of Secretariat Colony. Surender was taken to a government hospital and tests confirmed that he was under the influence of alcohol while driving the car. The student was booked under Sections 279 (rash driving), 337 (causing injuries) and 185 (drunken driving) of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, and arrested. “The other three were let off with a warning,” the traffic official said. The car was also seized by the traffic police.