Birthday boy, three others killed in horrific car crash

A pre-dawn outing to Nandi Hills turned fatal for four people as their SUV toppled after hitting a road divider on the northern outskirts of Bengaluru on Saturday. The crash also left five others wounded.

The nine-member group was celebrating the 26th birthday of Mallikarjuna Reddy, who is among the dead.

Mallikarjuna hosted a birthday party at his house in Avalahalli on Friday night. The friends then decided to drive to Nandi Hills. Mallikarjuna’s friend, Ashok Reddy, a GKVK staffer from MS Palya, had rented an SUV and offered to drive.

Police said Ashok was speeding. Around 3 am, while negotiating a curve near Handrahalli Cross in Devanahalli, he lost control of the SUV which went on to collide with a road divider before turning turtle.

Passersby rushed to the accident spot and called the police as all the victims were trapped inside the SUV. Police arrived at 3.45 am but could not do much as the SUV was mangled. Later, with the help of the fire force, they extricated the victims out of the car and took them to a hospital in Hoskote.

Doctors there declared four victims — Nagarjun, 25, Sundar, besides Mallikarjuna and Ashok — brought dead. All of them were sitting at the front. The five men seated at the back — Girish, 23, Ramesh, 26, Manjunath, 26, Ashok, 26, and Raghunath Reddy, 22 — have sustained grievous injuries and are under treatment.

A senior police officer said the crash was so powerful that the accident spot resembled a war zone with victims sustained gory injuries.

The jurisdictional Channarayapatna police have booked Ashok for causing accidental death due to rash and negligent driving.