Attempts being made to lift the container from the car at the accident spot. (Inset: The damaged car).
Credit: X/@bngdistpol; Special Arrangement
Bengaluru: A 46-year-old proprietor of a software company in Bengaluru was among five people from his family, including his two children and a niece, killed tragically in a road accident on Saturday on the outskirts of Bengaluru.
The deceased are Chandram Yegapagol, his wife Gaurabai, 40, his children Gyaan, 16 and Deeksha, 10, sister-in-law Vijayalakshmi, 35, and niece Arya, 6. Yegapagol was the managing director and CEO of IAST Software Solutions Private Ltd in HSR Layout in Bengaluru. They also resided in HSR Layout.
According to the police, Yegapagol and the five people were on the way to his native Morbagi village in Maharashtra’s Sangli district, which borders Vijayapura district in Karnataka, to see his ailing father and for Christmas holidays when the speeding container truck swerved to the opposite lane and crashed on their Volvo XC90 car, which the senior tech executive bought two months ago, killing them instantly.
The accident occurred on the national highway near Nelamangala and a few kilometres from Begur after 11 am.
A preliminary probe by the police revealed that the Eicher truck containing aluminium pillars, weighing several tonnes, was moving towards Bengaluru. The probe indicated that the driver lost control of the vehicle while trying to avert a collision with another vehicle in front of him.
The speeding truck lost its balance, jumped over the median and toppled on the Volvo car that was moving towards the Tumakuru side. The truck also hit a tempo before crashing down but with minimal damage.
The grisly moment when the truck crushed the Volvo car was captured on a nearby CCTV camera, which is being analyses by the police.
“All of that happened in a fraction of a second,” a police investigator said.
A criminal case has been registered against the driver, who survived and is being treated at a hospital, and Bengaluru Rural SP CK Baba has appointed DySP (Nelamangala) to lead the investigation.
‘He spoke on the phone 30 minutes prior’
One of Yegapagol's relatives told the media that he spoke to them 30 minutes before the accident. “He was my cousin. Since there was no space in the car, we didn’t travel with them. My father spoke to them around half an hour before the accident and Yegapagol said they were nearing Tumakuru. This was the last time we spoke to them,” the woman, who wasn't identified, said.
Set up the company in 2018
As per Yegapagol’s LinkedIn profile, he has a diploma in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from GPT Gulbarga and a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical and Electronics Engineering) from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK Surathkal).
In his long career, Yegapagol worked in senior positions with renowned companies such as Robert Bosch Engineering And Business Solutions, KPIT Technologies, Great Wall Motor based in China before setting up IAST Software Solutions in Bengaluru in 2018.
According to the company’s website, it has “a strong workforce of 100+ skilled engineers stationed across the globe, a wholly owned subsidiary in Shanghai, China and its strategic partners in France and Japan”.
Sources close to his family revealed that Yegapagol expanded the business recently to Pune.