Chittoor: Four persons died and 22 sustained injuries as a private bus overturned after hitting a divider in Tachuru road near Chittoor in the early hours of Friday.

According to police, the mishap occurred when the over speeding bus driver while trying to avoid hitting stationary tipper on the roadside lost control and hit the divider leading to the bus tumbling at around 2 am.

The passengers in the Madurai-bound private bus going from Tirupati were in deep sleep when the mishap occurred and woke up after the bus overturned screaming. Road workers nearby were alerted by the nose and cries of the panicked passengers.

They informed the police and also tried to rescue the passengers in the overturned bus. Police from Chittoor and ambulance also reached the spot and shifted the injured persons to Vellore CMC Hospital and Chittoor Government Hospital.

Chittoor district collector Sumit Kumar along with the senior officials immediately reached the spot as soon as he was informed of the tragedy, and took rescue measures.

The injured were taken to Chittoor district hospital. Some of the seriously injured were shifted to CMC Vellore Hospital for better treatment as their condition was serious.

The four people who died in the accident were identified as Ponnu Chandru(33), K Sreedhar (21) of Tirupati and Jeeva (40) of Kanyakumari and Prashanth of Kumbakonam. While the driver of the travel bus which was involved in the accident is being interrogated, the tipper driver has absconded.

Sources said the driver failed to notice the tipper engaged in the road work which is still going on due to poor visibility and frantically tried to avoid hitting it only after coming very near to it, resulting in losing control and hit the divider causing the accident.

Road transport minister and district in-charge minister Ram Prasad Reddy called up the district collector and enquired about the accident. He also directed the collector to extend all the required support to the injured bus passenger by way of treatment.