In a farcical incident, a stolen car met
with an accident near the Kurseong Tourist Lodge around 2pm this
afternoon when the thief was making away with the stolen vehicle.
Police sources said Kalyan Thapa, a
resident of MV Road in town had parked his Maruti vehicle, WB-77-4131 in
the premises of the Kurseong Railway Institute near the tourist lodge.
Around 2pm, a car lifter named Puran
Tamang, (36), a resident of Gauri-Shankar tea estate under Kurseong
sub-division, succeeded in prying open one of the doors of the vehicle,
got into it, ignited the engine and had even started driving away with
the car when mishap occurred and he happened to crash the stolen car on
NH 55 near the Kurseong Tourist Lodge, or precisely 30ft below on the
link road and the would-be thief sustained injuries.
The staff members and customers of the
Tourist Lodge, who were unaware of the theft and the identity of the
injured driver, rushed to the site and took him to hospital for
necessary treatment.
But after Tamang was being treated at
the emergency ward of the hospital and advised to get admitted for
proper treatment, he declined as he probably understood that doing so
would release his true identity and he would get into trouble. As soon
as he received first-aid treatment and Tamang trying to leave the
hospital, the police arrived and put him under arrest.
At present, Tamang the would-be car
lifter is receiving medical treatment at the Kurseong sub-division
hospital under police custody.
Meanwhile, Thapa uses his car to
transporting school children to and from a school located in the same
area. Since there was still an hour or the school to get over for the
day, he had parked his vehicle at the of the Railway Institute and was
biding his time. But, when he returned to where he had parked the
vehicle in a few minutes, Thapa found the vehicle was missing, and
instead, to his utter surprise, saw the wreckage of his vehicle just a
few meters away on NH55.
As per police sources, car lifting is
not a new trade practiced by Puran Tamang and he has been involved in a
number of criminal cases that includes a murder.
During the time of the incident, the
lodge s employees informed some Japanese tourists were enjoying a break.
Thy were taken aback by surprise and shouted as the accident occurred
right next to where they were standing, but fortunately none of them
sustained any injury.(EOIC)