TIRUVANNAMALAI: Four men were killed when the car they were travelling in collided head-on with a government bus on National Highway (NH) 77 near Somasipadi Kattukulam village (Tiruvannamalai district) in the early hours of Sunday.
Police have identified the deceased as S Stalin (44), D Satishkumar (47), and R Syleshkumar (44), all residents of Puducherry, and S Saropgynasekaran (50) from Villupuram. The four were friends engaged in the business of buying and selling lorries. Police said the accident occurred around 3 am when they were returning to Puducherry from Bengaluru.
According to Kilpennathur police, preliminary investigations suggest that the car, driven by Stalin, veered sharply to the right and rammed a government bus coming from Chennai. Police suspect the driver may have dozed off.
All the four died on the spot. The front portion of the car is now a pile of mangled metal. The windshield of the bus broke off. However, bus passengers did not suffer any major injuries, the sources said, adding that they were later shifted to another vehicle.
The bus driver alerted the police, who rushed to the spot, retrieved the bodies, and sent them to the Tiruvannamalai GH for postmortem.
A complaint was lodged by the bus driver.