Five persons, three of them members of a family, were killed when the car they were travelling in rammed a stationary Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation bus at Pattiveeranpatti in Dindigul district on Thursday night, according to reports reaching here.
The deceased have been identified as Joseph (45) of Kadukkamthadathil House, Ilackad, Marangattupilli, near Pala, his daughter Jismi (18), Joseph’s cousin K.P. John (48), and their neighbours Jomi (30) of Kochupulickal House and K.S. Sunilkumar (32) of Kanjirathamkuzhiyil House. Jismi was a student at a private engineering college in Dindigul. The other four had gone to Dindigul in a friend’s vehicle to take Jismi back home after she informed her parents that she was not keeping well.
According to the reports, Jomi was at the wheel when the accident occurred. The accident occurred at 11.30 p.m. at Singarakottai, within the Pattiveeranpatti police station limits, on the Vathalagundu-Chembattu road, nearly 30 km away from Dindigul. Though the police had rushed all the five to a hospital at Dindigul, they could not be rescued. The relatives back home were informed of the accident by 2 a.m.
According to the relatives, the bodies are to be handed over to a team that left for Dindigul on Friday afternoon.
Joseph, a daily wager, had taken an educational loan to provide technical education to his daughter. He leaves behind his wife and another daughter, a school student. John was an employee at the farmers’ cooperative GAICO, near Kuravilangadu. He leaves behind his wife, a son, and a daughter, both school students. Sunil Kumar, a driver on hire for private vehicles, was a bachelor. Jomi was an autorickshaw driver.
