A holiday drive through the hills ended in catastrophe on Friday when a Ford car carrying three men careered off a narrow mountain road and tumbled nearly 100 metres into a gorge, the entire horror sequence recorded on the vehicle’s own dashcam.
The white SUV, registration UP37P6641, was travelling the Chakrata–Tyuni motor road near Chilhaad (Chillad) village in Uttarakhand’s Dehradun district around 5.15 pm on 2 October when it lost control on a sharp bend. Footage that has since spread rapidly online shows the car veering, striking a roadside electricity pole, and then vanishing over the edge amid a cloud of dust and debris. The sequence from the moment the vehicle became unstable to the final plunge lasts roughly 22 seconds.
Inside were three men. Durgesh Chaudhary, 39, from Fatehpur Simbholi in Hapur, Uttar Pradesh, was killed instantly by the impact. His companions, Sunil Mandal, 27, of Mahavir Enclave, Delhi, and Rishabh, a resident of Dehradun, survived the fall but were left trapped and seriously injured beside the wreckage far below.
The State Disaster Response Force post at Tyuni was alerted by a caller. A team led by Constable Naveen Singh reached the site and, facing steep, unstable slopes, descended on ropes into the gorge. After a difficult recovery, they brought both injured men to the surface and transferred them by 108 ambulance to the community health centre at Tyuni. Chaudhary’s body was recovered and handed to police.
Local reports and the circulating video indicate the car had been moving at speed inappropriate for the tight, unguarded curves typical of the route. Commentators who examined the dashcam overlay noted moments where the indicated speed climbed well above what experienced hill drivers regard as safe, often cited locally as no more than 30 km/h on such stretches. The road offers little margin: sheer drops, limited barriers, and sudden bends leave almost no room for error once a vehicle begins to slide.
Mountain roads in the Chakrata–Tyuni sector have claimed multiple vehicles in recent months, with rescue teams repeatedly called to extract occupants from deep ravines. Officials have not yet released a formal cause, but the combination of speed, the sharp turn, and the collision with the pole is visible in the footage now viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
The two survivors remain under treatment. For the family of Durgesh Chaudhary, the holiday outing ended with a body retrieved from the bottom of a gorge and a video that records the final seconds before the car disappeared over the edge.
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