Back-to-back crashes on Thrissur's NH66 kill eight Tamil Nadu students and a family of three
Thrissur district in Kerala became the site of two fatal road crashes on successive nights in early September 2026, leaving eleven people dead and raising urgent questions about safety on the under-construction National Highway 66 corridor. The first tragedy, on the night of September 4-5, claimed all eight members of a group of engineering students from Tamil Nadu who were travelling to Kochi on a secret celebratory trip. Just one night later, a speeding car struck a family of three on their motorcycle near Kunnamkulam, killing a young couple and their three-year-old son. The two crashes together prompted national media attention and renewed public demands for accountability from highway construction authorities over the safety of travellers passing through active construction zones.
Eight PSNA College Students Die in Midnight SUV Crash Near Kaipamangalam
Eight engineering students from PSNA College of Engineering and Technology in Dindigul, Tamil Nadu, were killed when the sports utility vehicle they were travelling in crashed into a parked goods truck near Kaipamangalam in Thrissur district at around 11.45 pm on Friday, September 5, 2026. The students, all aged 20, had planned what Deccan Herald described as a secret trip to Kochi to celebrate their classmate Santhosh's recent purchase of a new car. Since the vehicle's registration was still incomplete, the group hired an eight-seater SUV from a tour operator in Dindigul for the drive south. A video recorded inside the vehicle hours before the crash showed the friends posing and celebrating their getaway in high spirits. Their SUV struck the rear of a Maharashtra-registered goods truck that was parked near Panambikkunnu Centre on NH66. Seven of the eight students died instantly at the crash site, while the lone survivor succumbed to his injuries at the hospital. The eight deceased were identified as Surya, Yuvasanjith, Joshua, Murali, and Jeeva, all from Dindigul, along with Santhosh and Prasanna from Madurai and Vishva from Salem. Their families in multiple Tamil Nadu cities received calls in the pre-dawn hours with news of the tragedy. [5]
Family of Three Killed a Night Later as Questions Mount Over NH66 Construction Zone
Just one night after the eight students perished, Thrissur district was struck by another fatal crash on the same highway corridor. Around midnight on Saturday, a speeding car struck a motorcycle carrying Muneer, 35, his wife Shifna, 24, and their three-year-old son Emil Aibak on the Guruvayur-Kunnamkulam road at Kurukkanpara Centre in Kunnamkulam, Gulf News reported. The family, residents of Edakkazhiyur in Chavakkad, was returning home after attending a wedding. Their motorcycle had stopped by the roadside so they could answer a phone call when the car struck them. The collision threw all three family members approximately 50 metres from the point of impact. Muneer and Shifna died before reaching hospital; Emil, who had suffered severe injuries, subsequently died. The driver fled the scene immediately after the crash, and police launched a manhunt; two other occupants of the car were taken into custody. Eyewitnesses told local media that the driver appeared to be intoxicated. The two crashes within 24 hours brought the under-construction stretch of NH66 under national scrutiny, with questions raised about the absence of warning signs and the overnight parking of heavy vehicles without adequate demarcation in the construction zone. [6]
Student IDs Led Police to Families Who Did Not Know Their Sons Were in Kerala
The task of identifying the eight young victims of the Kaipamangalam crash fell to local police, who recovered student identification cards from the wreckage and used them to contact the families of the deceased, the New Indian Express reported. In a number of cases, relatives were reached in the early morning hours with news that was doubly shocking: not only had their son been killed, but many families had been entirely unaware that he had made the journey to Kerala at all. The students had planned and kept their Kochi trip a secret, telling no one at home about their plans. The Kaipamangalam police used the student IDs to systematically identify each victim and notify their next of kin. The process of notification exposed a painful gap between a group of young men privately embarking on a weekend adventure and the families who would grieve them. The accident prompted calls from politicians and civil society members in both Tamil Nadu and Kerala for stricter regulations governing the placement of heavy vehicles in national highway construction zones. The New Indian Express noted that investigators pieced together the timeline using information from the video the students had filmed inside their vehicle earlier that evening. [3]
Sources: [5] Deccan Herald · [6] Gulf News · [3] The New Indian Express