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Bus Fire in Kurnool Kills 20

KURNOOL: Twenty passengers, including two children, were killed when a private travel bus belonging to Vemuri Kaveri Travels bound for Bengaluru from Hyderabad caught fire after hitting a two-wheeler on National Highway 44 near Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh early on Friday. Most of the victims were techies and families returning from the Diwali festivities and personal functions. The two drivers of the bus, including M. Lakshmaiah, who was at the wheel, have been arrested.

Another 27 passengers, nine of whom were injured, had a miraculous escape, most of them jumping out of the rear windows of the bus, which had been broken open. Survivors at the Kurnool Government General Hospital told this correspondent that the main door failed to open after the collision, forcing them to break the side windows to escape.

The mishap occurred around 3 am after the bus hit a two-wheeler going in the same direction, killing its rider, 21-year-old B. Shiva Sankar of Kurnool, on the spot. Preliminary investigations suggested that the bus driver did not stop after the accident and drove for about 300 feet, resulting in the two-wheeler getting entangled under the vehicle and getting dragged along. It is suspected that the fuel tank burst, leading to the flames that quickly engulfed the bus.

President Droupadi Murmu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief ministers N. Chandrababu Naidu of Andhra Pradesh and A. Revanth Reddy of Telangana expressed shock over the incident and offered condolences to the bereaved families. The Centre and the state governments announced ex gratia of `5 lakhs to the kin of each of the deceased and `2 lakhs for each of the injured.

The bus had a permit for a seater service but had been converted to a sleeper with its narrow confines and restricted space for passengers. Officials observed that the bus lacked emergency safety equipment, including glass-breaking hammers and clearly marked exit routes.

According to passengers who jumped off the bus, the two drivers stopped the bus when it became difficult to move ahead and got down. They were seen examining the vehicle and trying to douse the flames with water bottles. “They should have raised an alarm. Some more lives could have been saved,” one passenger told mediapersons near the accident site.

The fire left the victims' bodies badly damaged, making identification difficult. Police contacted the family members based on the details furnished by the passengers while booking tickets. “The details of all the dead passengers could be traced except one. Six each of the deceased belonged to Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, two each to Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, and one each to Odisha and Bihar,” said Andhra Pradesh home minister V. Anitha, who rushed to the spot along with transport minister M. Ramprasad Reddy. The bodies will be handed over after completing the DNA matching, she added.

The bus (DD01 N 9490), belonging to Vemuri Kaveri Travels, was initially registered in Diu Daman and later was transferred to Odisha. It continued to ply with Diu Daman plates. Initially, the drivers told police that a bike had fallen on the road, possibly from an earlier accident and their bus overran the two-wheeler.

“Based on forensic analysis, the postmortem report of the biker B. Shiva Sankar, a resident of Kurnool, scene reconstruction and witness statements, it was established that bus driver M. Lakshmaiah hit a bike,” Kurnool superintendent of police Vikrant Patil told this newspaper.

Fire tenders were pressed into service sometime after the mishap. Officials found that besides the bus batteries and highly flammable furnishings, cargo consisting of mobile phones aggravated the fire. “We found damaged spare parts of the handsets of a particular brand of mobile phones,” a senior fire services official told this newspaper.

Maintaining that one person who boarded at Aramgarh without a pre-booked ticket was yet to be identified, Mr Patil urged people having any information to contact 08518277305.

The bus had started from Moosapet in Hyderabad at around 9.30 pm on Thursday. A total of 40 passengers were on board, along with two drivers and a cleaner. Many of the victims are software engineers, private employees and families who attended Diwali celebrations or personal functions and were returning to Bengaluru. Some families perished in the mishap, leaving their relatives in deep shock.

Following the instructions of Mr Reddy, Telangana excise minister J. Krishna Rao, along with joint secretary of relief S. Harish, also rushed to the spot to monitor relief operations and help shift the injured from Telangana to their respective places.