Six persons were killed and five others suffered serious injuries when the SUV, in which they were travelling, collided with a truck near Sankepalli village in Mudigubba mandal of Anantapur district in the early hours of Saturday.
According to the police and eyewitness accounts, five persons were killed on the spot while another died while being shifted to the Rural Development Trust Hospital at Battalapalli mandal headquarters.
The police said the SUV, proceeding to Tirupati, was carrying 11 people. The dead have been identified as Sailaja (38), Sruti (16), Kavya (2), Ranga Swamy (40) and Nandini (18), while the injured are Ramaiah (48), Sumitra (38), Dhanush (36), Muniraju (28), Ananta Lakshmi (30) and Sagar (10), all belonging to Nelmangala village of Bengaluru Rural district of Karnataka. The bodies of the deceased have been handed over to the relatives after conducting post-mortem.
Police told The Hindu that the SUV went well out of its track hitting the right edge of the truck resulting in the accident. “It took more than seven people and two earthmovers to pull out the vehicle from the truck and then open the doors of the mangled vehicle and pull out the injured", said K. Prakash, head constable of Mudigubba police station.
