Eight people were killed when their car skidded off the Chandigarh-Manali national highway and fell into a gorge near Swarghat in Himachal Pradesh’s Bilaspur district early on Friday, IANS reported.

They were all returning home to Kale Ghanpur village near Amritsar in Punjab after visiting a famous Sikh shrine at Manikaran in Kullu district, the police said.

Seven people died on the spot, while two suffered grievous injuries and were taken to a hospital in the city of Nalagarh, The Times of India reported. One of them later died.

The sole survivor of the accident told the police that the the driver failed to control the vehicle while negotiating a turn in the road as the car’s brakes had failed.