11 dead as minibus hits tipper near Karnataka's Dharwad

DHARWAD: A school reunion trip to Goa ended in tragedy when 11 persons died and six were injured after their minibus collided with a sand-laden tipper on Pune-Bengaluru national highway bypass at Itigatti Cross on the outskirts of Dharwad on Friday.
Dharwad superintendent of police P Krishnakant told TOI that former students of Davanagere’s Saint Paul Convent School were heading to Goa for a three-day holiday.Nine among the dead were women and included a professor at a Davanagere medical college.
The bus met with an accident about 1km from a friend’s house in Gandhinagar, Dharwad, where the women were scheduled to have breakfast. Their batchmate Savita had arrived in Dharwad on Thursday to join the team on Goa trip.
Police took 4 hours to extricate 11 bodies; traffic hit on highway
Police said the minibus left Davanagere around 5am and the accident occurred around 7.30am. The vehicle was mangled due to the impact of the collision and police took nearly four hours to extricate the bodies and rescue the survivors. The accident disrupted traffic for three hours.
The deceased have been identified as Dr Preeti Ravikumar, 46; Paramjyoti Shashidhar Hunchur, 47; Varshita Veeresh Biradar,
46; Manjula Natesh, 47; Rajeshwari Shivakumar Bandennavar, 46; Dr Veena Prakash Mattihalli, 47; Ksheera Sureshbabu Poral, 21; Hemalata alias Manasi Kallappa, 48; Rajini, 47; minibus driver Raju Gurannavar, 37; and cleaner Mallikarjun Udagatti, 27, of Ranebennur.
Dr Preeti was a professor in the department of obstetrics and gynaecology, JJM Medical College, Davanagere. The injured are Asha Jagadish Bethur, 47; Veda Manjunath, 46; Usharani Ramesh, 46; Poornima Sureshbabu, 46; Praveena Prakash, 46; and tipper driver Basavaraj Irappa Kadarolli of Ugarkhod in Kittur taluk of Belagavi district. The injured were rushed to a private hospital in Hubballi.
Three of the injured were in a critical condition, one patient was airlifted to a private hospital in Bengaluru. Another patient was shifted to a private hospital in Belagavi on her family member’s request.
Group used to go on annual trips: Doc’s kin
A family member of Dr Preeti said the group of former students used to go on annual trips and they zeroed in on Goa this year.
On learning about the accident, inconsolable family members of the deceased rushed to Dharwad District Civil Hospital in Dharwad and Hubballi’s KIMS hospital, where the bodies were kept for postmortem.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief minister BS Yediyurappa expressed grief over the accident and wished speedy recovery of the injured persons.