KURNOOL: Fifteen people were killed and seven others injured in a ghastly road mishap on National Highway 44 near Veldurthi village in the district on Saturday evening.
The driver of a private travels bus, in an attempt to avoid a two-wheeler, swerved the vehicle to the middle of the road and the jeep, a 14-seater Toofan, rammed into it at a high speed leading to the death of 14 people in it. The bus hit the two-wheeler before the collision with the jeep, leaving one dead and injuring the other who were going on the motorcycle.
According to police, a group of 14 people from Ramapuram village in Vadepalle mandal of Jogulamba Gadwal district in Telangana were returning from Guntakal in Anantapur district, when the accident occurred. The group went to Guntakal for a matrimonial alliance. The jeep collided with the bus going to Bengaluru from Hyderabad. The two youths who were going on the bike, were crossing the road to enter Veldurthi when the mishap occurred.
Twelve of the 14 people travelling in the jeep died on the spot, while two others succumbed on the way to hospital, said Kurnool SP Fakeerappa, who rushed to the accident spot. Five people who were travelling in the bus, including the driver, suffered minor injuries.
The deceased were identified as Gopi (25), Tikkana (40), Salanna (30), Nagaraju (25), Somanna (45), Bhaskar (38), Parasuramudu (45), Ramudu (50), Vijay (30), Venkataramudu (30), Muniswamy (30), Chintalanna (55), Pagulanna (45) and Suresh (30) of Ramapuram and Masoom (35) of Veldurthi.
The bodies were shifted to the Government General Hospital in Kurnool for postmortem.
The SP said all the three vehicles involved in the accident were going at a high speed when the mishap occurred.
Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu expressed shock over the ghastly road accident and directed the officials concerned to ensure provision of proper medical treatment to the injured. YSR Congress chief YS Jagan Mohan Reddy and BJP State president Kanna Lakshminarayana also condoled the death of 15 people in the road accident in Kurnool.
Expressing grief over the death of 14 people from Gadwal district in the road mishap, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao directed the officials to rush to Kurnool hospital and ensure shifting of the bodies of the victims to their native place Ramapuram.