Tamil Nadu table tennis player Vishwa Deenadayalan died in a road accident on Sunday in Shangbangla, Meghalaya on his way to a tournament in Shillong.
The 18-year-old was travelling along with three other teammates by taxi from Guwahati to Shillong for the 83rd Senior National and Inter-State Table Tennis Championships, scheduled to begin on April 18.
The taxi driver died on the spot while Vishwa was declared dead on reaching the Nongpoh Civil Hospital.
Ramesh Santosh Kumar, Abinash Prasannaji Srinivasan and Kishore Kumar, who were travelling with Vishwa, are said to have suffered injuries. The organisers of the championships, with the Meghalaya government’s help, took them to the North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Sciences in Shillong for critical care. The team of doctors attending to them said the three players were stable.
Vishwa’s family members will be arriving in Guwahati and will return to Tamil Nadu with the body. The officials of the Meghalaya Table Tennis Association and that of the Ribhoi district administration at Nongpoh are expected to oversee the completion of the formalities.
The teenager was a promising player with several national ranking titles to his credit. He was expected to represent India at the WTT Youth Contender at Linz, Austria, from April 27.
A product of Krishnaswamy TT Club in Anna Nagar, Vishwa was trained by Ramnath Prasad and Jai Prabhu Ram. He had won the Cadet and Sub-Junior National titles also. The B Com student of Loyola College, Chennai won the Under-19 Boys title during the Dehradun National Ranking Tournament in January.
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