Sagar Bhattarai trial: Video shows tragic final moments before crash death

The reason why a car crashed during a road trip that had been live-streamed to Facebook by one of the victims has been revealed in court.

A driver had been drinking before he swerved to dodge a kangaroo and crashed, killing two of his friends — one of whom had live-streamed part of the rowdy road trip, a court has heard.

Sagar Bhattarai, now 25, faced Downing Centre District Court on Friday after being found guilty of two counts of dangerous driving occasioning death over the 2019 incident in country NSW.

Bhattarai’s childhood friend, 22-year-old Nepalese nurse Samikshya Subedi, had videoed the group of five’s drive to the Snowy Mountains before their car rolled on the Monaro Hwy near Cooma.

Samikshya Subedi, 22, filmed herself and her friends singing and dancing before the fatal car crash.

Samikshya Subedi live-streamed herself and her friends on Facebook shortly before the horror accident.

Ms Subedi and fellow passenger Gopal Bhandari, 21, died, while Bhattarai, who was behind the wheel, and two other male passengers were injured but survived.

In haunting video footage that was live-streamed by Ms Subedi to Facebook, the friends could be seen singing to music and speaking loudly to one another.

The court heard Bhattarai had been impaired by alcohol and had been travelling at speeds of more than 120km/h when he later swerved “excessively” when a kangaroo hopped towards the car.

Crown prosecutor Kate Ratcliffe told the court video footage had shown that Bhattarai had been warned by his friends about driving and that he had also been laughing before he lost control of the vehicle.

“The car was travelling very fast before the animal came from the left,” she said.

After Ms Subedi’s death one friend wrote online: “Just yesterday I was watching her live.”

Judge Peter Whitford, SC, said unlike other fatal road crashes this incident involved the offender being responsible for the deaths of people who had been close to him.

“Here the victims are childhood friends of the offender,” the judge said.

“Human experience would tell and experience of these cases frequently suggest that it’s all the consequences that flow for an offender from having been responsible for the death of somebody close to them.”

Judge Whitford said he needed more time to think about the case before he sentences Bhattarai and also said people could not attend the NSW District Court in person at the moment due to Covid. He adjourned the matter until September 3.

Bhattarai, who is out on bail, has also been found guilty of dangerous driving occasioning grievous bodily harm and causing bodily harm by misconduct while in charge of a motor vehicle.

Court records state on top of this he was listed for sentence on Friday for a backup charge of low range drink driving.

Tributes were posted on social media after Ms Subedi’s death.

“Can’t believe she is no more,” one woman wrote.

“Just yesterday I was watching her live.”