On the morning of March 12, 1995, passengers had boarded a bus of the J Jayalalitha Transport Corporation (JJTC) from Broadway in Madras (as Chennai was known then). The bus was bound for Bangalore (now Bengaluru). Over an hour into its journey, the bus was proceeding closer to Greenland Hotel, a highway eatery in Sunguvarchathram, about 55 kms from Madras, where long distance buses would halt for refreshment those days.
Elsewhere, at K Podavur Village in neighbouring Kancheepuram district, many men, women and children, boarded a tractor-trailer. They were en route to Palla Mulachur to attend the betrothal of a young woman, Kokila.
The people on both vehicles were unaware that their fates would meet shortly that day at Senthamangalam village near Sunguvarchathram.
Around noon, a speeding tanker came on the highway, which was then a single road with lush agriculture fields on either side. The driver tried to overtake the tractor-trailer, hit its front portion and collided with the oncoming JJTC bus. In a flash all three vehicles were engulfed in flames. Within the next “three to four minutes”, the flames consumed at least 49 people including women and children. It took two hours for eight fire tenders, from Kancheepuram, Tiruvallur and Madras to put out the blaze.
