As many as 31 people have suffered injuries, some of them sustained grievous injuries, in a head-on collision between a private bus and a lorry on National Highway 63 near Bisgodu Cross on the outskirts of the town on Saturday night.
The bus belonging to SRS Travels was going to Mangaluru from Hubballi. The lorry bearing Tamil Nadu registration rammed into the bus.
The Yellapur sub-inspector A Y Kamble and staff, along with the help of the local residents at Bisgodu Cross, rushed the injured to the Yellapur taluk hospital. The injured were later shifted to the hospitals in Hubballi, Dharwad and Belagavi in private ambulances.
The jurisdictional police have registered case against bus driver Rajesh Mudaliyar (21) and lorry driver S Ramu (46).
The injured are:
Annapurnamma Guttal (61), Rekha Dinesh (62), Chandrakala Nayak (23), Shambhavi Shetty (65), Loknath Pujari (61), Reethu Loknath Pujari (25), Indira Loknath Pujari (52) and B R Nanda Raghottama (61), all residents of Dharwad; Surekha Patil (61), Vinaya Kotyan (46), Yashodhar Kotyan (49), Medha Hegde (31), Vinayak Hegde (31) and Raju Angadi (51), all natives of Belagavi; Kruthika Sureshrao (19), Keerthan Ramesh Bhat (26) of Hubballi; Asha John Peter (50), John Peter Arogyaswamy (55) and Prateek John Peter (20) of Dandeli; Pangal Ashok Shetty (58) of Mumbai; Sheetal Devalgaonkar (62) of Kalaburagi; Aishwarya Patnekar (47) and Raghottam Acharya (70) of Mangaluru, Shoukat Shamshuddin (28) of Kerala, Rajesh Umashankar Mudaliyar (21) and Ashok Rajendran (24) and Senthil Raman (27), the last two from Tamil Nadu.