Five young men were killed in Tamil Nadu on Sunday, September 5, when the car they were travelling in crashed into a stationary trailer lorry in Perungalathur, a suburb of Chennai. The incident took place in the wee hours of Sunday, according to reports. The deceased have been identified as four engineering graduates from Hindustan University and the driver of the car. They have been identified as Raj Ganesh (21), Naveen (21), Ajay (21), Rahul (20) and Arvind Shankar (21). While Naveen is from Mettur, Salem, Ajay hails from Trichy, Rahul from Pudukottai and Arvind Shankar from Chennai.
According to several reports, on Sunday one of the deceased had travelled to Mettur to attend a job interview. The group was travelling towards Vandalur and Chennai at midnight when their car rammed a lorry laden with iron roads parked on the side of the road on the Trichy-Chennai highway. It is yet unclear if the car crashed into the lorry or if it was hit by another speeding vehicle which led to the accident. The car was entirely damaged and the bodies of the deceased were trapped into the vehicle. Fire and rescue services and staff of the Government Chromepet Hospital helped retrieve the bodies and conduct post mortem. The police are now checking CCTV footage to see how the accident had taken place.
The site of the accident has been inspected by police officers including N Kumar, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Traffic, South. A case has been registered by the Traffic Investigation team Chromepet.
According to the National Highways Authority of India, it is a legal offence to park lorries on the roadside. Investigating officers have added that had the lorry not been parked on the road, the tragedy could have been avoided. The police suspect that the impact points in the car following the accident suggest that the car was hit by a third vehicle before it rammed the lorry.