Five people died Saturday when the car in which they were travelling collided head-on with a state-run bus on the city's southern outskirts, police said.
"The mishap occurred when the car (Maruti Swift) driver lost control after the vehicle's front right wheel tyre burst on the Kanakapura road, about 20 km from the city centre," Kanakapura SP Anup Agarwal said.
The victims, all residents of a suburb in south Bangalore, were returning to the city after a late lunch at Kanakapura, 60 km from here, in the neighbouring Bangalore rural district.
According to an eyewitness, the ill-fated car was at high speed when its tyre deflated suddenly and swerved to the right ramming into the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation bus coming from the opposite direction on the state highway, connecting old Mysore area.
"All inmates of the car - four boys and a girl - died instantaneously due to the impact of the crash and we had difficulty in extricating their bodies from its mangled remains," Agarwal said.
A case of unnatural deaths have been registered and police are on the lookout for the bus driver who fled from the spot soon after the mishap.
"We want to interrogate the bus driver to ascertain how the mishap took place. All commuters in the bus were safe," Agarwal added.