Toll goes up to three in road accident at Mukka

Mangaluru: The death toll in the ghastly Mukka accident has gone up to three, with two more people who were injured succumbing to injuries. The deceased are Aparna, a resident of Odisha, who passed away on Saturday night and Avanth from Raichur, who died on Sunday night. Avanth was driving the ill-fated SUV.
On Saturday, Gloria was killed on the spot ,and nine others were injured, some grievously, after the SUV they were travelling in jumped over the divider and hit an oncoming truck on the Mumbai-Kochi National Highway at Mukka, about 18 km from here.
All the occupants of the SUV were postgraduate student of Architecture and Planning College at Manipal. They have been identified as Mriduna, Rekha, Gayatri, Melinda, Anita, Avanth, Ankita and Sucharita, all aged between 23-24.
KMC Hospital sources on Sunday evening said the bodies of the deceased students, Gloria and Aparna, have been sent to Kochi and Bhubaneswar respectively.
One of the student, Melinda, has been shifted to Manipal as she’s a local. She has suffered a clavicle fracture. Meanwhile, Rekha and Gayathri have been moved to a ward at a hospital in Mangaluru. Of the four under treatment here, one girl is still critical. “She requires a lot of care,” the hospital source added. The parents of the rest of the victims of the accident have reached Mangaluru and are at the hospital.
The source noted that the impact was such that all students have endured severe trauma.
Ten students, including two boys, had rented an SUV and come to Mangaluru on Saturday morning on project work. They had visited a ‘Guthu’ (ancestral) house at Thokur and later another house at Jeppu. The incident took place when they were returning to Manipal from Mangaluru at 4.15pm.
Sources said, quoting an injured student, that the person, who was driving the SUV, lost control over the vehicle when a vehicle went into a puddle on the other lane, and water splashed on the windscreen of the ill-fated SUV from across the road, which blinded the driver for an instant, and he lost control and went over the median and hit an oncoming truck.