Bhubaneswar: Five members of a marriage party were killed after their car plunged into a roadside pond in Dhenkanal district in the early hours of Thursday. They had got trapped as the car doors could not be opened, while two others escaped unhurt.The seven, part of the groom’s party, were returning from Indipur village under Dhenkanal Sadar police limits after attending the wedding ceremony of Abhishek Sahu of Bangursing village in Motanga, when the accident took place around 2.30 am.One of them managed to come out of the car and informed a relative on the phone, said another relative of the groom, Durbasa Kumar Sahu. “According to our information, the driver lost control of the car at a curve near Chhatia village, following which the vehicle fell into the pond. When we reached the spot, the car was submerged in the pond. Four others and I tried hard to rescue them, but we could not manage it immediately. Later, residents from a nearby village joined the rescue operation and pulled the occupants out. By then, five of them, who had got trapped inside the car, had died,” he said.Dhenkanal superintendent of police Abhinav Sonkar said they have registered a case in this regard and started an investigation. “We will investigate how the vehicle met with an accident. At this stage, we can’t say how this occurred,” he said, adding that the bodies were sent to Dhenkanal district headquarters hospital for postmortem, before being handed over to the family members.Deceased Sriram Sahu, 25, Chandrakant Swain, 27, Abinas Sahu, 26, Rakesh Sahu, 25, and Abhijit Sahu, 27, were relatives and friends of groom Abhishek. One of them was driving the car.A villager, who was part of the rescue operation, said two of the seven occupants managed to escape, while the others were trapped as the car doors could not be opened. “Soon after receiving the information about the accident, we rushed to the spot, but it was too late,” he said.
