Five young friends, all under 25 years of age, were killed after their SUV collided with a sand-laden tractor-trolley in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, on Sunday.
The group was returning to Gwalior from a birthday party in Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, when the mishap occurred near Malwa College.
The impact of the collision was so severe that the Toyota Fortuner SUV (MP 07 CG 9006) was mangled, and all five occupants died on the spot.
Police officials said that although the vehicle’s airbags deployed, they burst due to the force of the collision, indicating that the SUV was being driven at nearly 150 km/h.
Police and rescue workers had to use cutters to dismantle the SUV’s frame to extract some of the bodies, as they were trapped inside the vehicle.
The deceased were identified as Kshitij Rajawat alias Prince, Kaushal Bhadoria, Aditya Pratap Singh Jadon, Abhimanyu Singh, and Shivam Rajpurohit.