Chennai: Four persons, one of them a three-year-old girl, died and 20 others were injured after the van in which they were travelling stalled on the road and was hit by a private bus on the Vandavasi– KancheÂepuram road on Palar bridge in neighbouring KancheeÂpuram district on Sunday night. The victims were returning from a birthday celebration from Cheyyar in Tiruvannamalai when the incident took place.
Two men, Siva, 25, and Sasikumar, 22, who were pushing the van to make it start, were killed on the spot while Munusamy, 48, and Yogalakhmi, 3, daughter of Sankar, succumbed to injuries at the KancheÂepuram GH.
The police said Munusamy, a resident of Keezh Venpakkam village, in Arakkonam taluk in Vellore, along with his friends and family visited Chithaathur village, near Cheyyar, to celebrate the first birthday of his grandson Karthik whereafter they set out in two vans to Vellore.
One of the vans broke down en route on the Palar bridge around midnight after it ran out of fuel. The van driver sent two passengers to buy diesel from a nearby fuel station which he then poured into the fuel tank.
The van would still not start and six of the passengers began pushing it when they noticed a bus hurtling towards them at high speed and raised an alarm. Before the passengers and driver of the van could react, the bus collided head on, dragging the van with it for over about 20 ft before coming to a halt.
The driver of the bus, hired by a private firm at Padappai to ferry employees in the mornings, abandoned the vehicle and fled. Kancheepuram collector K. Baskaran visited the accident spot and called upon the passengers undergoing treatment at the hospital. The distraught family members refused to accept the bodies of the deceased after the post-mortem until the police assured them of the arrest of the bus driver.
