A Volvo bus run by the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC), taking 43 young employees of Infosys Technologies Ltd to their first assignment at the company’s Pune facility, hit a divider around 5 am on Thursday, killing five of the employees. Three died on the spot, at Nipani in Karnataka, some 45 km from Kolhapur, and two died of injuries on way to a hospital in Belgaum. The condition of at least six of the 27 injured employees is understood to be serious.

Skid marks at the site extended to well over 100 metres as the imprint of the tyres was deeply etched on the NH4 road surface.

The local police, who arrived within 15 minutes of the accident, said the bus had evidently been speeding.

The Karnataka police identified the dead as Ankita Vedprakash Arya of Delhi, Agnivesh Atidardhi of Bihar, and Kush Mishra, Tushar Agrawal and Rachit Mehrotra, all of Uttar Pradesh.

All five were in their early twenties. In all, there were 45 people in the bus, the driver and the cleaner of the bus apart from the 43 of Infosys. Both KSRTC employees escaped with minor injuries; they too were taken to the hospital in Belgaum.

Infosys, however, did not confirm the names of the dead. “It was a new batch of employees who had finished their training at Mysore and were heading to join work at the Pune centre,” said an Infosys spokesperson from Bangalore. The team was to join work at company’s campus at Hinjewadi.

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