Mohit Duhan kills two women, including pregnant wife, in crash near Laharum

A former Hoppers Crossing truckie caused the death of two women, including his pregnant wife, and seriously injured his own daughter when he veered into oncoming highway traffic.

A Hoppers Crossing man who drove into oncoming traffic on the Western Highway, killing his own pregnant wife and a 68-year-old woman, has avoided jail.

Mohit Duhan, 32, faced the County Court on Wednesday, where it was heard the former truck driver was travelling to Adelaide for a family holiday before the fatal crash on December 27, 2021.

Duhan’s wife, who was 15 weeks’ pregnant, sat in the back of their Toyota Kluger with the couple’s three-year-old daughter as they headed towards Horsham doing roughly at the 100km/h speed limit and behind other vehicles.

In the opposite direction on the two-lane road drove a 68-year-old man in a Kia Sportage, who was going to Melbourne from Adelaide with his wife of the same age.

The road near Laharum was dry, with conditions Judge James Parrish called “excellent”.

As the vehicles approached each other, Duhan veered onto the wrong side of the road and within two seconds collided head-on with the Kia at 82km/h.

Duhan’s sleeping wife was thrown into the footwell.

She was later removed from the Kluger, but died at the scene.

The female passenger of the Kia died on impact, and her husband was stuck in the vehicle for 90 minutes.

The daughter was secure in her seat, but was seriously injured and along with her father was taken to hospital with her father, as was the male survivor in the Kia.

The Kia driver was inflicted with a broken thigh bone, breaks of the fibula and tibia, a “smashed” ankle, a fractured pelvis, and later had a heart attack.

He had seven operations in 10 days, was in hospital for a month, spent 10 weeks in rehabilitation, and attended a small service for his wife while “half in pieces with grief”.

Through a statement made to the court, he said his injuries made daily life more difficult and that he had a sense of being “hollowed out”.

For several months he “agonised” over the memory of turning to the “most important person in his life”, realising she was dead, and being “unable to reach her” and “unable to touch her”.

“She died beside me and I could do nothing,” the man said, and recalled being dragged from his car and departing in a helicopter without the woman he had met when they were both 18-year-old university students who fell “deeply in love”.

“I have never known such suffering,” he said.

“Indeed, on occasion I can barely recognise myself in my grief.”

The man said he did not wish for Duhan to be separated from his daughter as there had been “too much suffering already”.

The husband of the 68-year-old victim of the December 2021 crash near Laharum said he and his wife had been “inseparable”.

Duhan was called a kind and compassionate family man of good character with an unblemished driving record who felt “deep emotional sorrow and remorse” about the crash.

The court heard he felt well rested on the day and that he insisted he had maintained his focus while driving.

He struggled to remember exactly how the crash occurred, recollecting only the oncoming car and pursuing sensations – the smell of burning, the sight of his daughter bleeding from her mouth, and the sound of his wife asking what happened.

In a letter cited by Judge Parrish, Duhan said he had many sleepless nights and prayed his god would perform a “miracle” and take his own life in place of the victims’.

“If my daughter Mayra wasn’t here, I would have lost all of the hopes for my own life,” he said.

“ … Most of the time I sit in the garage alone and cry.”

Within a week of the collision, Duhan set up an online fundraiser in the hope of securing his daughter's“bright future”, which raised more than $15,000.

Judge Parish described the consequences of the crash as “catastrophic”.

He said Duhan’s steering into the wrong lane was done unintentionally and attributed it to “momentary inattention”.

Duhan pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to dangerous driving causing serious injury and two counts of dangerous driving causing death.

He was convicted and sentenced to a four-year community correction order during which he must do 250 hours of unpaid community work.

Duhan’s driver licence was cancelled and he was disqualified from obtaining another for 18 months.