5 killed, 20 hurt in 3 accidents

Sundarraj (38), a homeopath who was running a clinic at Kurinjipatti in Pudukkottai along with his friends Udayakumar (37) of Aravakurichi in Karur and Kanagaraj (38) of Vaiyyapuri Nagar in Karur were travelling to Thanjavur from Pudukkottai and Kanagaraj was driving the car. 

Around 6 am, when their car reached Vannarapatti branch road near Gandharvakottai, the driver Kanagaraj lost control and rammed a tipper lorry bound from Gandharvakottai to Pudukkottai. In the incident, the car was mangled and all the three were trapped inside. 

On hearing the noise, locals rushed to the spot and found that all the three occupants — Sundarraj, Udayakumar and Kanagaraj — had died due to heavy blood loss. Meanwhile, two motorists were killed in separate incidents in Chengalpet.  

In the first accident, V Thangavelu (25), a farmer from Palaar was killed when his two-wheeler collided with another bike in Valluvar on Sunday night. In the second case, Elavarasan (22), an employee of a private firm, who was riding to his office, was run over by an unidentified vehicle near Chengalpattu on Monday morning. 

Police, after checking the CCTV footage of a nearby building, found that it was a van which had caused the mishap. In yet another mishap, over 20 students of a private college in Tirupur suffered injuries after the college bus they were travelling in toppled when its driver suffered an epileptic attack on Monday. 

According to police, the college bus with around 50 students from Kunnathur was heading to the college located at Muthur Chettipalayam in the morning. While nearing Koolipalayam Ring Road, the bus driver Karuppasamy, 35, suffered an epileptic attack. The public rescued and sent the injured students to Tirupur Government Hospital for treatment.