Four pilgrims from Tamil Nadu killed

By Our Staff Reporter

KOCHI, JAN. 4. Four persons returning from Sabarimala after a pilgrimage were killed and 14 others injured, when the van in which they were travelling lost control and was thrown off a bridge across the Vaikom Road near Thripunithura today.

The deceased have been identified as: Arumugham of Panayatheruvu in Guduvancherry, Ramu, son of Kaniyappan, Chennai, Christopher (van driver), son of Chellappan, Maraimalai Nagar, and Murali, Rani Anna Nagar, Guduvancherry. The condition of one person, Mr. Bhaskar (21), admitted to the Medical Trust Hospital in Kochi, was stated to be serious.

The accident occurred early this morning. Though the van had hit the rails of the bridge very hard, it did not fall into the canal. But one of its doors flew far away. Its petrol tank was crushed and the fuel had leaked out.

While Arumugham (45) died on the spot, Christopher (32) died on way to hospital. Ramu died at the hospital soon after arrival and Murali died an hour after admission to the hospital.

The van formed part of a three-vehicle pilgrimage from Guduvancherry and nearby places in Chengalpet district. Some of the nearly 60 pilgrims in the three vehicles are said to have hailed from Chennai.

They had left on the pilgrimage on December 31 under the leadership of Arumugham. They had reached Sabarimala on the New Year Day and had darshan of the Lord on Sunday. They left the hill shrine on Monday evening.

Though all the pilgrims had moved together on their pilgrimage, they did not know one another closely. Thus the police had a tough time getting the details of the dead and injured. Mr. Arumugham had led several pilgrimages to Sabarimala in the past several years.

Since the accident took place after midnight, there were very few people in the neighbourhood. The accident was noticed by one of the two other vehicles which had preceded the van. This vehicle had gone a few kilometres back when the van was found missing. However, the injured persons could be rushed to hospital within a short time with the help of the people who came to the accident site and the police. The accident site is splattered with blood, torn clothes, footwear and other tell-tale remnants.

The bodies are kept in the freezer at the General Hospital here. Police said the relatives had been informed and that postmortem would be done only on Wednesday after their arrival.

The following is the list of injured persons along with the name of the hospital to which they have been admitted:

Lakshmanan (50), Muthu (28) and Ramesh (24) (RCM Hospital), Suryakumar (22), Sreenivasan (25), Muniswamy (19), Shankar (45) and Velu (24) (Ernakulam Medical Centre), L. Suresh (23), Kumar (25), Perumal (20), Balaji (25) and G. Suresh (24) (Government taluk hospital, Thripunithura).

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Section  : Regional
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