Five people in a car, among them an 11-year-old boy, died on Sunday around 11am on the Khamgaon-Pandharpur national highway, at Shindewadi Cross Road in Majalgaon tehsil, Beed district, Maharashtra. Police say the speeding car swerved to avoid potholes on a bridge and hit an MSRTC bus head-on. That is a police account, not a finding of blame.

The dead, all from Majalgaon, were going to Tuljapur in Dharashiv district: Omkar Mahadev Giri, 24; Gajanan Mahadev Namdas, 38, and his son Samarth, 11; Somnath Bade, 23; Anil Acharya, 40. All five died at the scene. The bus was smashed at the front; its passengers are described as unhurt in the preliminary account. Some PTI copy mentions one person critically injured; the death toll of five is steady.

The Hindu, from PTI, and the Times of India match the same place, hour and names. Locals blocked the highway for hours, blaming poor asphalt on the Majalgaon-Telgaon stretch. Traffic moved again after police and district officials spoke to the protesters.

Roadside CCTV, an official said, shows the loss of control at the potholes. Footage is not a trial. Cause - speed, a hole, both - remains an accident inquiry, not a court.

An 11-year-old in a family car is not a statistic. It is a name, Samarth, on a potholed road. The protest afterwards is local anger, not an expert report.

Beed is inland Maharashtra. On Sunday a state bus and a car met on a bridge. Five people did not reach the temple.

Image: TeshTesh, National Highway 11 in Rajasthan, 2015, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons; an archive Indian highway, not the Beed site.

Sources consulted: Five killed as car crashes into State transport bus in Maharashtras Beed district - The Hindu; 5 killed as car swerves to avoid potholes, crashes into bus in Maharashtra - Times of India.