India, Sept. 16 -- On a humid Tuesday afternoon, grief hung heavy at Venkateshwar Hospital in Delhi's Dwarka. Two stretchers lay side by side, one carrying the body of deputy secretary in the economic affairs department of the finance ministry (central) Navjot Singh, the other holding his battered wife, Sandeep Kaur. The woman is being treated at the hospital.

Forty-eight hours earlier, the couple had set out on a quiet Sunday ride to central Delhi's Bangla Sahib Gurudwara, unaware that their lives were about to be torn apart by the screech of tyres and the shattering impact of a speeding BMW.

Sandeep Kaur, still injured and bandaged, reached out to touch her husband's lifeless face the last time before relatives carried him away for cr...