Yadgir: Nine members of a family, including four children, were burnt to death after their car collided with a private bus and caught fire at Shantapur Cross in Surpur taluk on the Bidar-Srirangapatna Highway Friday.The accident occurred around 9.45 am when the car attempted to overtake another vehicle and got wedged between it and the bus before the collision. The impact was so severe that both the car and the bus were completely gutted in the blaze, though all 20 bus passengers managed to escape in time. Police said 10 people, including five children, were travelling in the car. Nine of them died, while Virat Raghavendra, son of deceased Shashikala, survived with fractures, Yadgir SP Pruthvik Shankar said. According to police, the family from Sirwar in Raichur district was returning from Surpur after a darshan of Venugopalaswami and was headed towards Lingasugur from Yadgir. The bus was travelling from Bengaluru to Kalaburagi.The victims were identified as Krishna Nayak, 52, his wife Anantha Kala Krishna Nayak, 45, Sharanappa, 36, his wife Nisarga, 30, their sons Siddhartha, 3, Advik, 5, daughter Srinidhi, one-and-a-half-year-old, Shashikala, 30, and her son Chandan, 8.Krishna, a town panchayat member in Sirwar, was driving the car.Eyewitnesses said the car got stuck under the bus after the impact. “We rushed to rescue the car passengers and dragged two children out of the burning vehicle. Six people died on the spot,” they said. Surpur police and Fire and Emergency Services personnel, along with residents, carried out the rescue work.
