India bus fire kills 45, many burned alive
Print Edition
A speeding bus exploded in a ball of flames after crashing into the central reservation of a southern Indian highway early yesterday, killing 45 passengers, many burned alive.
Only five people on the vehicle escaped the inferno, including the driver and the cleaner who broke windows and fled before the fuel tank exploded, police said.
“The total number of charred bodies found is 45, including that of a small child,” L Sarman, a senior district administrative official, said.
“The driver was speeding at about 120-130 kilometers an hour. He was driving all night, it seems he may have fallen asleep at the wheel,” said Sarman.
Fatalities were high even by the deadly standards of India, where bus crashes are common, particularly on the treacherous roads of the northern Himalayas.
Police said the driver and cleaner had tried to flee the scene of the accident, which occurred around 5am between Bangalore and Hyderabad.
Relatives of the victims screamed and broke down in tears outside the office of the vehicle operator in Hyderabad. Police arrived later to question the owners of Jabbar Travels, which offer buses to cities across the south of India.
Many of the victims were charred beyond recognition. Television pictures showed flames leaping out of the vehicle, which was completely gutted by the time firefighters arrived.
The survivors were being treated in a nearby hospital in Wanaparthy, police said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed sorrow over the loss of lives in the bus accident, while the state government asked police to investigate the matter and submit a report.
The Times of India reported that at least five of the victims were software engineers who were traveling home to celebrate the Hindu festival Diwali on Sunday.
Both Hyderabad and Bangalore are centers of India’s booming IT industry.
Diwali is one of India’s biggest festivals which sees tens of millions of migrants head back to their families.
Around 140,000 people died in road accidents in India in 2012, according to the government’s National Crime Records Bureau, which works out at 16 an hour.
Bad roads, speeding vehicles and poor driving are among the contributing factors.
Commercial drivers are largely unregulated, meaning many work long hours overnight which raises the danger of them falling asleep at the wheel, campaigners say.
In May at least 33 people died when an overcrowded bus skidded off a road into a fast-flowing river in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh.
At least 30 were killed earlier this month in the northeastern state of Assam when a heavy goods truck careered onto the wrong side of the road and smashed head-on into two packed vehicles.
The World Health Organization’s global status report on road safety 2013 found that eight percent of India’s road user deaths were bus drivers or passengers while 32 percent were riders of motorbikes or three-wheelers.
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