WARANGAL/SURYAPET/SANGAREDDY : Celebrations turned into a tragedy when four Intermediate second-year students, all aged 19, died after a two-wheeler they were riding collided with a private bus on the outskirts of Yellanda village on the Warangal-Khammam highway late on Wednesday.
Sources said that the boys were returning to Yellanda in Warangal district from Hanamkonda where they had gone to celebrate the completion of their Intermediate studies.
The victims have been identified as P Ganesh, M Siddhartha, V Teja and P Anil Kumar, all hailing from Yellanda. Siddhartha and Anil were students of Wardhannapet government junior college while Teja and Ganesh studied at a private junior college in Hyderabad.
While three of the victims died on the spot, the fourth succumbed to injuries while undergoing treatment at the MGM Hospital in Warangal.
The impact of the collision was such that the bodies of the students were strewn across the highway. The accident resulted in a traffic jam stretching over one km on the highway.
Police shifted the bodies to MGM Hospital for a postmortem examination. Wardhannapet S-I A Praveen Kumar said that a case has been registered under IPC Section 304(A) and an investigation is underway.
Elsewhere in Durgapuram village of Kodad mandal, six people died and four others sustained injuries when the car they were travelling in crashed into a stationary lorry on the highway.
The victims were identified as N Chandar Rao (55) and his wife Manikyamma (50), N Krishamraju (30), N Swarnakumari (20), J Srikanth (30) and Lasya (4).
They were residents of L Govindapuram village of Bonakal mandal in Khammam district and were on their way to Vijayawada from Hyderabad. The four injured persons were shifted to Kodad area hospital for treatment.
Meanwhile, a 33-year-old man was burnt alive after the car he was travelling in rammed a lorry near the Muthangi toll plaza in the wee hours of Thursday and caught fire.