Bengaluru: Four friends who were heading to Nandi Hills after a birthday celebration died on the spot after their SUV overturned in Bengaluru Rural district early on Saturday morning.
The deceased have been identified as Mallikarjuna Reddy (26), an employee with GKVK and resident of M.S. Palya, Nagaraju (25), a resident of Bagepalle and unemployed, Ashok Reddy (26), an employee with a travel agency who was driving the SUV, and Sundar,(25), a businessman.
The deceased were seated in the front, while the other occupants – Girish (23), Ramesh, (26), Manjunath (26), Ashok (26) and Raghunath Reddy (22) – were seated in the back. They have sustained injuries and are being treated at a hospital in Hosakote.
After a party to celebrate the birthday of Mallikarjuna, they headed to Nandi Hills to catch the sunrise. Around 3 am, when they reached near Handarahalli Cross in Devanahalli, Ashok, who was driving the SUV, lost control while negotiating a curve and crashed into a median. The vehicle overturned and skidded to a distance before coming to a halt.
The Channarayanapatna police visited the spot and shifted all the victims to a nearby hospital, where four of them were declared dead.
After a preliminary inquiry, the police said that the occupants of the SUV, including the driver, were drunk. The police are waiting for the postmortem report of the deceased. A case has been registered at Channarayanapatna police station.
