New Delhi: Union Rural Development Minister and a popular backward class leader from Maharashtra Gopinath Munde on Tuesday died of multiple internal injuries suffered in a road accident in Central Delhi early this morning. 64-year-old Munde, who made his entry into the Union Cabinet for the first time last week, was on his way to the airport when his car was hit by another vehicle at Prithviraj Road-Tughlak Road intersection in the heart of the capital. A brother-in-law of late BJP leader Pramod Mahajan, Munde is survived by his wife and three daughters, one of whom is an MLA from Parli in Maharashtra's Beed district.
"The minister has died of multiple internal injuries. No external wound was found on his body. When he was brought to Trauma Centre, his pulse and hearth beat were not working," AIIMS spokesperson Dr Amit Gupta said after a team of doctors conducted a post-mortem on his body. Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said Munde suffered cervical fractures and oxygen to the brain and lungs may have been cut off following the injuries. His liver had tear at 2-3 places and there was one-and-half litres of blood in his abdomen because of the injury, he said.
"The major thing that cost him very heavily was a fracture of the cervical spines C1 and C2. When you have fracture at C1 and C2, the blood supply at the brain gets cut off because the vertebral artery gets damaged immediately," Vardhan, himself a doctor, said. Munde's secretary S Nair, who was in the car, said the Union minister received a huge shock after the accident and apparently suffered a massive heart attack. The driver of the Indica car was detained from the spot and later arrested by police. Police said Munde had some minor abrasions on his nose.
After the accident, Munde sought water and asked his driver to take him to the hospital, police said. Munde was considered the architect of social engineering in BJP since the mid-1990s and was responsible for adding parties like RPI and Rashtriya Samaj Party and Swabhimani Paksh into the Sena-BJP alliance that virtually swept the polls winning 42 of the 48 seats. He had only last night attended a meeting of the Union Council of Ministers called by the Prime Minister and was proceeding to Mumbai for work when the accident occurred.
