Chennai: A two-year-old boy was run over by a schoolbus in which his sister was travelling to school in Sholavaram in neighbouring Tiruvallur district on Monday.
According to the police, the boy, Varshan, was accompanying his mother, Jothi, to the Aangadu-Sirumanoor road to see off his sister, Varshithi, 3, when the accident took place.
The bus, which arrived around 8.20 am and took Varshithi on board, had moved only a few metres when the driver heard the cries of onlookers and Jothi from behind.
The rear wheel of the bus had ran over the boy who had crawled under the bus while his mother was busy seeing off Varshithi, who is in LKG at Dr Sivanthi Aditanar matriculation higher secondary school in Puzhal.
Jothi, wife of daily wage worker, Saran Raj, found the boy crushed by the rear wheels of the bus and raised an alarm along with others.
The child had died on the spot. The Sholavaram police said it was possible that the mother failed to notice the boy crawling under the bus as she was busy seeing the older child off.
The bus did not have the regular assistant on Monday since he had fallen sick. The driver was driving without assistance, the police added.
The presence of an assistant or conductor would have made a great deal of difference, the police pointed out.
The body was handed over to the family after a post-mortem at Tiruvallur GH.
Though the driver, Mohanakrishnan, 34, abandoned the bus and escaped from the scene immediately after the accident, he was later arrested by the Sholavaram police in Red Hills. The police indicated that the school management had agreed to compensate the family for the accident.
The school has agreed to support Varshithi’s education till she completes her plus-two, the police said.
Meanwhile, a three-and-a-half-year-old girl, daughter of a security guard, plying on the street in Kattangulathur, was crushed under a reversing car on Sunday evening.
The police said the girl, Aparna, daughter of Sudhakar, a resident Gangai Amman Koil street, was accidentally hit by a reversing car driven by businessman Raju.
The girl was taken to hospital in the same car but succumbed to injuries later. The police arrested Raju for rash and negligent driving.
