In the early hours of Monday, a stationed tourist vehicle was hit from back by a large lorry and fell on them as they sat on a low-rise concrete barrier on the Chennai-Bengaluru Highway (NH 44).
The accident, which occurred at around 2:40 a.m. in Tamil Nadu’s Sandaipalli village near Tirupattur district’s Natrampalli town, injured ten other persons, including the drivers of the van and the lorry. Five of the injured were women, according to authorities.
According to a report by The Hindu, the deceased include M. Meena (50), D Devayani (32), P Saittu (55), S Devika (50), V Savitri (42), K Kalavathi (50), and R Geetha (34). They were all from Vellore’s Pernambut.
The deceased, along with eight relatives from Pernambut, were on a journey from Saturday to see pilgrims and tourist spots in Karnataka’s Mysore, for which they had booked two tourist vehicles.
One of the front wheels of one of the vans punctured on the highway as the women were returning, causing them to get off the bus and sit on a one-foot-high concrete median near the vehicle. The van’s warning lights and other lights were working.
At the same moment, the lorry’s driver, 34-year-old P Arunachalam, was in route from Bengaluru to Chennai with smartboards for classrooms.