india

Updated: Jul 21, 2019 00:39 IST

All nine college students on board a compact sports utility vehicle (SUV) and the driver were killed when the car collided head-on with a truck on the Pune-Solapur highway early Saturday, the police said.The accident occurred in the Kadamwakvasti area of Loni Kalbhor village, around 20 kilometres from Pune,

The nine students, aged between 19 and 23, were returning home to Yavat,village from a picnic at Raigad Fort. According to the police, the car driver lost control, hit a median and jumped onto a no-entry stretch where it collided with the truck coming from the opposite direction at around 1 a.m.

“On their return journey, the car driver lost control over the wheels and first collided with the divider and went onto to dash the truck coming from the other direction,” said Loni Kalbhor police station in-charge Suraj Bandgar.

The impact of the crash was so strong that it reduced the car to a mangled wreck. The rescuers had to cut open the car to extricate the bodies. “The faces of the victims were unrecognizable and identification was carried out with the identity documents in their possession,” Bandgar said.

A first information report registered after the accident blamed the driver of the car, whose identity wasn’t mentioned, for rash and negligent driving .According to some eyewitness accounts the police gathered, the car was speeding minutes before the accident occurred.

Locals said deadly road accidents were common on the Pune-Solapur highway because of weak enforcement of traffic laws.

The bodies were brought to Sassoon General Hospital for a post-mortem examination and handed over to relatives around 1 pm. A large number of villagers from Yavat and relatives of the students were present at the hospital. The entire village observed a shutdown as a mark of respect to the victims.

The dead students were dentified as Akshay Bharat Waikar and Vishal Subhash Yadav, both 20; Nikhil Chandrakant Wable ,20; Sonu alias Noor Mohammed Abbas Daya, 21; Parvez Ashpaque Attar, 21; Shubham Ramdas Bhise, 19; Akshay Chandrakant Dighe, 20; Datta Ganesh Yadav, 20; and Zubair Aziz Mulani, 21.