Yatish Yadav, a 24-year-old national-level basketball player, died at the scene of a collision on National Highway 309 near Pirumadara in Uttarakhand’s Ramnagar, India, after the couple’s Mahindra Scorpio SUV collided head-on with a dumper truck in the early hours of Friday, Oct. 2, 2026, police said.
His wife, Sheetal Yadav, a doctor, was critically injured. Police took her to Ramnagar Joint Hospital and, after initial treatment, referred her to a private hospital in the Delhi-NCR region.
Police said the crash happened between 1:20 a.m. and 1:45 a.m. Residents near the highway told police that a truck had struck a car in the Pirumadara area, and a police team was dispatched to the site, said Ramnagar Station House Officer (SHO) Sushil Kumar.
A Late Drive to Nainital
The dead man’s father told police the pair set out from home late on Thursday, Oct. 1, for Nainital in the Scorpio, traveling the Kashipur-Ramnagar route. The journey was described as running from Kashipur to Nainital at the time of the crash. They reached the crash site hours after they set out from home.
Yatish Yadav was a resident of Shahpur Bametha in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad and worked as a teacher at a private school. The couple had been married for around four months, police said.
Father Alleges Driver Negligence
Suresh Yadav, father of the deceased, alleged that its driver was attempting to overtake another vehicle when the dumper truck, loaded with minor minerals, crossed onto the wrong side of the road. By his account, the speeding dumper struck the Scorpio head-on and overturned the SUV, pinning both husband and wife beneath the vehicle on impact.
Negligence by the dumper driver caused the crash, Suresh Yadav alleged. He demanded an impartial investigation into the collision and strict action against those found responsible.
Search for the Dumper Driver
Whoever was driving the dumper fled the scene. Acting on the father’s complaint, police registered a case against the unidentified driver and launched a search for him.
Officials identified the dumper by the registration number HR38AC 4554 and described it as a 22-tire dumper coming from the opposite direction. As of publication of the account on or about Oct. 2, no arrest of its driver is reported.
Officers took possession of the body and sent it for a postmortem examination. The post-mortem was carried out at Ramnagar Joint Hospital, where the player’s family arrived.
The family’s account supplies the only version of how a loaded dumper came to be in the Scorpio’s path, and officers have yet to determine who crossed the center line. Investigators are looking at the condition of the two vehicles, where the wreckage came to rest and what the truck was doing in the minutes before impact.
“A detailed investigation into the accident, including the role of the dumper and its driver, is underway,” police said.
Nainital is one of the hill stations most popular with travelers from the plains, and the couple’s trip ended on the highway outside Ramnagar. Tourist traffic from Uttar Pradesh and Delhi pours into the Kumaon hills along National Highway 309, a main artery that also carries heavy commercial vehicles hauling sand, stone and other minor minerals out of the region’s riverbeds. The two traffic streams share the same two lanes through stretches such as Pirumadara, often in the dark.
