Ten dead bodies were fished out from an open well near Nakkalakottai in Tirumangalam, into which a van carrying a marriage party plunged, in a tedious overnight rescue operation.
All the ten persons, including 4 women and 3 children who were in the van after leaving the newly wed couple – Satheeswaran and Uma - at the groom’s place at Thevaram in Theni district, were killed in the accident on Thursday night.
The deceased were identified as Uma’s parents Chithiraivel, 55, and Murugammal, 50, of Thoothukudi, her brother Gopalakrishnan, 31, sister Aruna, 34, her sons Sanjay, 8, and Kailash Sabari, 6, Madhavan’s son Saravana Vishwa, 4, Mani’s wife Rajeswari, 36, Periyathai, 45, and van driver Arul Sakthi, 25.
Seated in the last row, Vishwa’s father Madhavan, Rajeswari’s husband Mani, and Aruna’s husband Karuppasamy, escaped miraculously after locals rescued them by breaking open the window of the ill-fated van soon after it tumbled into the roadside well on the narrow Usilampatti-Tirumangalam road.
Uma was married to Satheeswaran, an engineer working in Chennai, on Feb 6 at Thoothukudi. Her parents and kin took the newly wed for maruveedu to Thevaram and were on their way back when the tragic accident took place.
Police and fire service personnel carried out the rescue operations under the supervision of collector U.Sagayam and SP Asra Garg until Friday morning.
Two special cranes were brought to fish out the bodies.The bodies were taken to Tirumangalam GH for post-mortem.