Ahmednagar (Maharashtra), May 24 (IANS): Seven persons in a Bolero jeep were killed after the driver nodded off at the wheel, crashing the vehicle into a divider and then ramming into an oncoming truck near Dhangarwadi here early on Wednesday morning, the police said.

Around 4 a.m., the vehicle, headed from Pune to Buldhana via Aurangabad, went out of control, crashed the divider and hit the truck bound for Ahmednagar on the busy Aurangabad-Ahmednagar highway, Vilas Kanawade of the MIDC Police Station here said. 

All seven, including the driver, aboard the jeep died on the spot.

All the passengers, on a pilgrimage in Buldhana district, were fast asleep in the vehicle at the time of the accident. The driver of the truck fled the scene of the accident.

"As per preliminary investigations, the jeep driver apparently dozed off at the wheel as the speeding vehicle climbed onto the road divider. It then collided head-on with the truck coming in from the opposite direction," Kanawade told IANS.

Those killed have been identified as Manohar Rambhau Gaikwad (45), Gokul Rambhau Gaikwad (40), Ankush Dinkar Nemane (45), Kiran Balu Chavan (50), Swapnil Balu Chavan (17), Arun Pandurang Shinde (30) and Mubarak Abbas Tamboli (52).

They were proceeding on a pilgrimage from Pune to the mausoleum of Muslim saint Hazrat Abdul Rehman Shah, who is revered as Sailani Baba, in Buldhana.

The police are searching for the absconding truck driver, Kanawade said.