NAVI MUMBAI, March 20 -- An early-morning drive to catch the sunrise in Lonavala turned tragic for three Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) students who were killed in a high-speed crash on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway on Thursday morning. According to the police, the three friends had spent the night watching a movie in the Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai before heading to Lonavala. Around 8.35 am, on their way back to Mumbai, their Volkswagen Polo allegedly rammed into a container truck while trying to overtake it near the Bhatan tunnel on the expressway. The impact was so severe that the car flipped multiple times and was reduced to a mangled heap, police officers said. The accident was first reported by a Shivneri bus driver, who alerted the highway traffic police. After reaching the accident site, the authorities had to use cutters to pull the students from the wreckage. They were rushed to MGM Hospital in Kamothe, where doctors declared them dead on arrival. The three deceased were identified as Omkumar Nitin Borse, 23, a resident of Malegaon; Shreyansh Naresh Sharma, 20, from Jaipur; and Lay Prashant Deshbhratar, 21, from Nagpur. According to the police, Borse was driving the car. Police said the three were part of a group of six IIT-B students travelling in three Volkswagen Polos, believed to be rented. The other three students, who were in two separate cars, were not involved in the crash. "The group had gone to watch a movie at the Bandra Kurla Complex and then headed to Lonavala for a leisure trip. The accident occurred during their return journey to Mumbai," said a police officer. Preliminary findings suggest the accident occurred about 1.5 km after the Bhatan tunnel, when the car, travelling in the middle lane, attempted to overtake a container truck in the slow lane. "It appears that during the process of overtaking, the car crashed into the rear portion of the container, leading to a severe impact, following which the vehicle toppled and rolled multiple times," the officer said. An FIR has been registered against an unidentified person based on a complaint filed by Hitesh Kumar Meena, one of the students travelling in another car. Police said they are reviewing CCTV footage from the expressway to identify the container truck involved. Police are also examining whether overspeeding or driver fatigue played a role in the accident. Soon after the crash, personnel from the highway traffic police and IRB Tollways rushed to the spot. The damaged vehicle was later removed using a crane to restore traffic flow along the expressway. Shreyansh Sharma, one of the deceased students, wanted to become an IAS officer after completing his BTech in mechanical engineering, his family said. "He was a brilliant child," his father, Naresh Sharma, told HT. "He put so much effort into getting a rank at IIT Bombay. He was very active on the campus, too." Shreyansh, who was in his final year of mechanical engineering at IIT-B, was the Institute Secretary of Hostel Affairs and passionate about sports and music, his father added. Omkumar Borse was in the second year of his aerospace engineering course at IITB. According to his friends, he was passionate about cricket and swimming, and was very active on the campus. He was the event co-ordinator of IIT Bombay's entrepreneurship cell for more than two years, and was also the secretary of one of the hostels. "He was passionate about aerospace and did internships in the same field," said Borse's friend and batchmate, who requested anonymity. "He used to push the boundaries of innovation and technology in the aerospace field." The third deceased, Lay Deshbhratar, was a second-year physics student from Nagpur....