By Martin Carvalho

MALACCA, MALAYSIA: A grandmother-to-be was killed when a car knocked and dragged her for about 10m in a residential road in Taman Merdeka Jaya on Monday.

S. Walima, 57, had rushed out of her house at 10.30pm when she heard the screams of her seven-month pregnant daughter-in-law P. Jayanthi, 22.

Walima and her son (Jayanthi's husband) S. Sivakumar, 27, found Jayanthi sprawled on the road after a car had rammed into her.

As they were seeing to her, the car, driven by a 48-year-old jobless man, suddenly accelerated and hit Walima and Sivakumar before crashing into a drain. Sivakumar was flung onto the bonnet.

Walima succumbed to her injuries at the scene.

Jayanthi and the baby are said to be in stable condition while Sivakumar suffered minor injuries. They have been warded at Putra Specialist Hospital for observation.

Police have detained the driver who is from the nearby Taman Melaka Baru.

Jayanthi was waiting outside the house for Sivakumar to send her to the factory some 10 minutes away when the accident occur-red.

Sivakumar's elder sister S. Chitrah, 30, who is attached to the Gombak police headquarters, said she was shocked that the incident occurred just outside their house.

"I can't believe that it happened right in front of our house in a housing estate," a distraught Chitrah said when met at the Malacca Hospital mortuary.

Walima's body was taken home for the funeral rites and cremated at the Malacca Memorial Park yesterday.

Earlier, state executive councillor and state MIC secretary R. Perumal visited Jayanthi and her husband at the hospital.

He urged the Road Safety Council to consider having campaigns in housing estates.

"It is such a tragedy that the accident happened not on a busy main road but in a lane in a housing estate," he said.