2 collegians dead, 7 hurt in expressway accident

Two 16-year-old college students died while seven others were injured when the car they were travelling in overturned on the Mumbai-Pune expressway around 10.45am on Friday.
Nine students, all residents of Dadar, were travelling in a Ford Fiesta (MH-01-AC-7056) to Lonavla.

The deceased have been identified as Rishikesh Gupta, 16, and Anvit Mingale, 16. The injured are: Tushar Pawar, 23, Aman Parocha, 21, Sanket Mhatre, 18, Apurva Motivale, 16, Tushar Sinhar, 18, Neha Phadtare, 16, and Deepu Sawariya, 18.
The students, belonging to different city colleges, had planned a picnic on Thursday, said an official of the New Panvel police station.

According to the police, Pawar, the owner of the car and a student of Bandra’s MMK College, was driving at a high speed and lost control. It went off the road before turning turtle. The accident took place near the Bhatan tunnel.

Vice-principal of MMK College VP Shanbaug said she was not aware of the accident. “We will have to go through our college records to see if they were students of our college,” she said.
All the students had told their parents that they were going for lunch to Bandra, the police said. The police said that the parents were surprised when they learnt about the accident.