Kabaddi-lover boy dies in New Zealand accident

AUCKLAND - An Indian origin family in New Zealand was in mourning after losing its six-year-old son who died in a road accident while going to see a kabaddi match, a media report said Thursday.

Lovedeep Singh was killed while on his way to the annual Punjabi kabaddi games in Takanini town when the van he was in rolled on the Southern Motorway, the New Zealand Herald reported.

The boy suffered massive head injuries and died. The incident took place Sunday.

Lovedeep’s cousin Tajinder Singh, 19, was driving the van and six women members of the family were with him.

Sukhjit Kaur, the van’s owner who was riding in it, recalled Tajinder Singh as saying that the car was going out of control.

Then the van spun and headed towards the barrier, which it struck after turning 180 degrees.

Lovedeep’s mother, 33-year-old Harjinder Kaur, was taken to Middlemore Hospital’s intensive care unit with brain damage and a badly injured arm. She underwent four hours of surgery.

Four days later, her head injury has improved, but she has no control from the elbow down. Doctors told the family that damage in her shoulder was stopping messages getting through from her brain.

Harjinder Kaur wasn’t aware that her son was dead.

“She keeps asking me, ‘Where is Lovedeep, where is Lovedeep?”‘ a relative was quoted as saying.

The boy’s distraught uncle Bachan Singh Lally said: “(Lovedeep) was always going to the park to practise.”

Paying tributes to his nephew, Lally said: “He was always playing. He had a lot of toy cars that his mum would buy from The Warehouse. He was very healthy. My mother went to buy clothes for him in India and the shopkeeper asked how old he was, he thought he was about nine years (old).”

Lovedeep would often sit and have dinner with his parents at Lally’s restaurant called Wishing Well of India.

But the boy would barely touch his meal “because he would talk too much with his mum”, said Lally.

He said relatives in India wanted Lovedeep’s body to be sent there but the family hadn’t taken a decision.