Date:05/11/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/11/05/stories/2005110516510100.htm

Front Page

Seven killed in two road accidents

Karnataka Bureau

Four engineering college students, a couple and son meet tragic end

FATAL CRASH: The wreckage of the car by which the four engineering students were travelling near Tumkur.

TUMKUR/BANGALORE: Four engineering students and three members of a family were killed in two accidents in Tumkur and near Hoskote in Bangalore Rural district respectively.

Four students of Sri Siddhartha Institute of Technology (SSIT), Tumkur, died and one was critically injured when the car in which they were travelling collided with a goods van on the southern bypass in Tumkur in the early hours of Friday. All of them were Bengali.

SSIT Vice-Principal H.P. Sudarshan said the four died on the spot and identified them as Sabyasachi Sarkar, whose parents are in Haridwar; Parijat Dasgupta, whose father is a pilot with Indian Airlines, Bangalore; and Suryadeep Gaine and Subhajit Dutta, whose parents are in Kolkata.

The injured student, Devajit De, has been taken to a hospital in Bangalore. He is said to have a head injury and fractures on an arm and a leg.

Prof. Sudarshan, on hearing the news, rushed to the scene of the accident along with two professors, Sanjeev Kumar and Bharatesh. He said the police have registered a case against the driver of the goods van.

The body of Parijata Dasgupta was handed over to his father in the afternoon after a post-mortem, he said.

Friends of the victims said Parijata's parents bought him the car only a few days ago. Nearly all students and faculty members of SSIT and many from the five other engineering colleges here gathered at the general hospital mortuary where the post-mortem on the bodies was conducted.

Three of family die

A couple and their three-year-old son were killed and four members of the family seriously injured when a vehicle hit the autorickshaw in which they were travelling in Hoskote police station limits in Bangalore Rural district on Thursday night.

The police said the accident occurred around 11 p.m. on the Chennai-Bangalore highway, off Channapura Cross.

The driver of the vehicle, which hit the autorickshaw head on, sped away after the accident.

The police said Ravi Kumar and six members of his family were travelling in the autorickshaw from Yelagunte to Gadigenahalli.

Ravi Kumar, who was driving, his wife, Sharada alias Shantha, and their son, Robin, 3, were killed on the spot.

The couple's two other children, Ravi Kumar's father, Gundappa, and uncle Venkataswamy were seriously injured and have been admitted to the Government Hospital in Hoskote, the police said. The Hoskote police, who have registered a case, are on the lookout for the vehicle that hit the autorickshaw, and its driver.