A movie night in Mumbai followed by a spontaneous early-morning drive to watch the sunrise in Lonavala ended in tragedy for three IIT-Bombay students, who were killed in a crash on their way back on Thursday.
The students were found trapped inside the mangled wreckage of their car after it rammed into a container truck on the Mumbai–Pune Expressway around 8:35 am. Highway traffic police used cutters to pull them out before rushing them to MGM Hospital in Kamothe, where they were declared dead.
The accident was first reported by a bus driver. The students were travelling in a Volkswagen Polo, which crashed into the rear of the container truck while attempting to overtake it near the Bhatan tunnel on the expressway.
An FIR has been registered against an unidentified person based on a complaint filed by Hitesh Kumar Meena, another student travelling in a different car. Police are reviewing CCTV footage to identify the container truck involved and are examining whether overspeeding or driver fatigue played a role in the crash.
The three students were a part of six IIT-B students travelling in rented Volkswagen Polo. The group had spent the night watching a movie in Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex before heading to Lonavala for a sunrise drive.
The deceased students were identified as Omkumar Nitin Borse, 23, a resident of Malegaon; Shreyansh Naresh Sharma, 20, from Jaipur; and Lay Prashant Deshbhratar, 21, from Nagpur.
