Yatish Yadav, a 24-year-old national-level basketball player, was killed on Friday, Oct. 2, 2026, when the Mahindra Scorpio he and his wife were riding in collided head-on with a dumper truck on National Highway 309 near Pirumadara, in Ramnagar, Uttarakhand, India. Police said the crash happened between 1:20 a.m. and 1:45 a.m.
His wife, Sheetal Yadav, a doctor, was critically injured. She received first aid at Ramnagar Joint Hospital and was then referred to a private hospital in the Delhi-NCR region.
Where He Died
Police said Yatish Yadav died at the scene. Amar Ujala reported instead that doctors at a government hospital in Ramnagar declared him dead after residents rushed the couple there. His postmortem was carried out at Ramnagar Joint Hospital, where his family later arrived.
Ramnagar Station House Officer Sushil Kumar said residents had alerted police that a truck had hit a car near Pirumadara, and officers went to the site. He told reporters that a thorough investigation, including the role of the dumper and its driver, was under way.
The Family’s Account
The couple left home late on Thursday, Oct. 1, bound for the hill town of Nainital by way of Kashipur and Ramnagar, according to the victim’s father, Suresh Yadav.
Suresh Yadav told police the dumper was carrying minor minerals and that its driver pulled onto the wrong side of the road while trying to overtake another vehicle. He said the speeding dumper hit the Scorpio head-on and flipped it, pinning the couple beneath the wreck.
He blamed the dumper driver’s negligence for the crash and called for an impartial investigation and strict action against anyone responsible.
The Driver Is Still Missing
The dumper’s driver ran from the scene. On the father’s complaint, police opened a case against the unidentified driver and began looking for him. Police identified the truck as a 22-tire dumper with the registration number HR38AC 4554. As of Tuesday, Oct. 6, no arrest had been reported.
Investigators have not said who strayed across the center line. They are examining the condition of both vehicles, where the wreckage ended up and the dumper’s movements in the moments before impact.
Who He Was
Yatish Yadav taught at a private school and played basketball at the national level. He lived in Shahpur Bametha, in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh. The couple had been married for four months, police said.
The couple were heading for Nainital, a popular hill station for travelers from the plains. The highway they were on carries tourist traffic from Uttar Pradesh and Delhi into the Kumaon hills, along with heavy trucks hauling sand, stone and other minerals from riverbeds, and the two share the same two lanes at places such as Pirumadara, often in the dark.
