Five persons, including a woman, were killed and 28 were injured when the luxury bus they were travelling in rolled down an embankment along the bypass near Itagatti village, near Dharwad, on Friday morning.
There were 35 passengers in the National Travels bus which was on its way from Mumbai to Chennai.
The Dharwad Rural police identified four of the dead as Vijaybahadur Devanarayan Mourya (50) and his wife Meena Devi from Haryana, Manoranjan Nanda (35) from Uttar Pradesh and Gopinath Mufa (40) from Andhra Pradesh. The identity of the other victim is yet to be ascertained. The injured were rushed to the Karnataka Institute of Medical Sciences hospital in Hubli. The condition of three of them is said to be critical.
The accident occurred around 5 a.m. when the driver lost control on the bus while trying to overtake a lorry.
Three children in the bus had a providential escape, the police said. The driver and the conductor are absconding.