4 Indians charred to death in multi-vehicle crash on US highway in Texas

Four Indians, including a woman, have died in a massive crash involving five vehicles in Texas. The victims had connected through a carpooling app and were on their way to Bentonville in Arkansas on Friday when the tragedy struck. The crash led to a fire in the SUV they were in, and their bodies were charred. 

The victims, Aryan Raghunath Orampati, Farooq Shaik, Lokesh Palacharla, and Dharshini Vasudevan, are all Indian; Orampati and his friend Shaik were returning from seeing his cousin in Dallas, while Lokesh Palacharla was travelling to Bentonville to meet his wife. Authorities are relying on DNA testing to confirm their identities. Dharshini Vasudevan was travelling to Bentonville to see her uncle. She had completed her master's degree at the University of Texas and was employed in the United States. 

Darshini Vasudevan's father had tagged External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in a Twitter post three days back and sought help in locating his daughter.  "Yesterday evening she took a car pooling along with 3 others around 3pm till 4pm she was actively messaging and reachable on phone after 4pm no further contacts could be established with her as well other 3 people who were travelling with her," he added in the post.

Orampati's father Subhash Chandra Reddy owns a Hyderabad-based firm named Max Agri Genetics Private Limited. In Coimbatore, at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Aryan earned his engineering degree. Shaik, a friend of Orampati, was also from Hyderabad and resided in Bentonville. Darshini, from Tamil Nadu, was living in Frisco, Texas.

According to reports, a speeding truck rear-ended the SUV the victims were in. Every everyone inside the vehicle perished from burns when the car caught fire. To verify the identities, the police are depending on tooth and bone remnants as well as DNA fingerprinting. "DNA fingerprinting will be done to identify the bodies, and the samples will be matched with the parents," a local authority stated.

A long weekend in the US has delayed the identification process, prolonging the suffering of the victims' families.
 

• Aryan
• Farooq Shaik
• Hyderabad
• Indians
• Lokesh Palacharla
• Texas
• US accident
• Coimbatore