By Vidhi Thacker
Two students from Symbiosis International University in Pune lost their lives and two others were injured in a road accident on the Mumbai-Bengaluru highway on Thursday morning, according to police officials.
The students were travelling back from Lonavala in a Maruti Swift car when, at around 5.45 am, the vehicle crashed into a container truck near Eidgah Maidan at Dehu Road in Pune.
Police identified the deceased as Divyaraj Singh Rathod, 23, from Rajasthan, and Siddhant Anand Shekhar, 22, from Jharkhand. Their classmates, Nihal Tamboli, 20, and Harshavardhan Mishra, 22, were injured in the accident.
Emergency teams from the Dehu Road police station, the highway safety patrol and the fire brigade reached the scene after receiving the alert. All four students were taken to a nearby hospital, where doctors declared Rathod and Shekhar dead. Their bodies were sent for post-mortem examination, while the injured are being treated at a private hospital.
An FIR has been registered and the truck driver, Manish Kumar Manipal, 39, has been taken into custody. He was a resident of Wadala in Mumbai. Police are investigating the cause of the accident.
Investigators said the car involved in the accident belonged to Nihal Tamboli and he was driving at the time. According to police, the accident occurred when the truck ahead of them slowed down, leading the car to collide with it. Officials added that the injured students are in stable condition and further investigation is underway.