Four people were killed in an accident involving a car they were travelling in and a goods carrier truck on the East Coast Road, near Chennai, on Sunday. Two others were severely injured in the head-on collision. The truck driver fled from the spot immediately after the accident.

According to reports, the incident happened around 5.45 am on East Coast Road between the Kunnathur and Madamai villages near Mahabalipuram. The car carrying six persons, who were from a charitable trust in Puducherry, was on its way to Chennai while the truck was traveling to Kalpakkam. They were reportedly on their way to T Nagar from Puducherry to attend a function. The truck driver is said to have overtaken a vehicle on the side of the road leading to Kalpakkam and crossed over to the opposite lane and collided with the car.

In the impact, three persons inside the car -- Senthil Kumar (40) from Vellore, Sundaravarathan (54) and Murugan (53) from Puducherry died on the spot. Seeing the accident, a few passersby alerted the Mahabalipuram police, who reached the spot and sent the other three persons in the car -- Jayabalan (67) of Panruti, Pranavamurthi (60) from Chennai and Thialagam (43) from Villupuram -- to the government hospital in Chengalpattu for treatment. Pranavamurthi succumbed to his injuries on Sunday afternoon while in the hospital. The other two are in critical condition.

The truck driver, meanwhile, is still missing and the police have registered a case of causing death due to negligence and are looking out for him. Traffic on the busy ECR was disrupted for a short period on Sunday morning, as the police and the rescue workers were clearing the mangled remains of the car and the truck off the road. Though the ECR is being upgraded into a four-lane road over the last few years, the stretch where the accident took place has two-lanes and does not have a median.