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The bus had began its journey from Kukatpally, a suburb in north-western Hyderabad, round 9.40 p.m. The two households boarded the bus at L.B. Stadium, which is about 9 kilometres from Kukatpally. There have been 44 passengers and two drivers within the bus, in keeping with the journey company’s ticket checklist. Some of the passengers fell asleep within the air-conditioned bus, whereas others remained glued to their telephones, their faces illuminated by the blue glow of screens.
Ramesh recollects what occurred hours later. “There was a thud that shook me out of sleep,” he says. “I assumed a tyre was punctured and the driving force would cease, however he continued to drive.” He checked his telephone. It was 3 a.m.
A number of seconds later, he seen thick smoke emanating from the driving force’s cabin. “Someone from the again shouted, ‘Fire! Fire!’ We noticed flames within the entrance of the bus,” says Ramesh.
The bus halted in the midst of the highway. Ramesh peered into the darkness and noticed a median on the proper aspect and bushes on the left. He felt a way of foreboding. He bolted to the entrance door to open it, however shrank again because the blaze grew to become larger.
“I assumed all of us have been going to die and wished to flee one way or the other,” he says.
Ramesh picked up a blunt object and began hitting a window on his left aspect. Three blows later, the glass pane shattered. Ramesh pushed his two kids out after which his spouse.
As he did this, he screamed concerning the fireplace outbreak to alert his cousin on the higher berth. “By then, thick clouds of black smoke had stuffed up the entire bus and folks have been coughing. I wished to avoid wasting my cousin and his household however I couldn’t keep within the bus for a second longer,” says Ramesh, crying as he remembers the previous few moments within the burning bus earlier than leaping out to avoid wasting his personal life.
Ramesh’s prolonged household of 4 have been among the many 19 passengers who died within the tragedy that befell close to Chinnatekuru village of Kallur mandal within the Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh. Several others have been injured.
Charred stays
That night time, Harish, a techie from Hyderabad, was additionally heading to Bengaluru in a automotive along with his associates. As the automotive got here near the standing bus close to Chinnatekur, Harish seen a physique mendacity on the left aspect of the highway. “I first thought a passenger had fallen off the bus. I went nearer and realised that the bus had caught fireplace,” he says.
Harish stepped out of the automotive and ran in direction of the bus. He picked up a boulder and threw it on the automobile, breaking a window pane. “People have been screaming. I noticed a girl holding a toddler on her lap. There have been flames throughout her. She gestured to me frantically for assist however I used to be unable to do something. Some folks jumped out by means of the damaged window,” he says.
Harish says he couldn’t see the driving force anyplace. “It was pitch darkish. It was additionally raining, so we couldn’t see a lot,” he says.
At about 3.20 a.m., the Kurnool police acquired a name from a communications skilled, Hyma Reddy, who had seen the burning bus from her automotive from throughout the divider. The one that attended the decision — an officer of the Special Branch — alerted the Inspector of the Ulindakonda police station, about 7 km from the accident spot, after confirming the placement with Reddy.
Family members grieve the dying of a cherished one within the accident. | Photo Credit: Nagara Gopal
The police rushed to the spot with their groups, recollects Reddy. Firefighters and ambulances additionally arrived across the similar time. They doused the fireplace and located a number of charred our bodies inside. The police moved the our bodies to the Kurnool authorities hospital for DNA finger printing assessments to ascertain the identities of the useless.
The police additionally discovered skid marks on the highway 200 metres away from the spot, a motorcycle caught beneath the bus, burnt sealed packing containers of cellphones inside one of many baggage cabins, and naked entrance wheels with out traces of tyres. These findings, they are saying, triggered a number of theories about how the bus had caught fireplace.
The police additionally discovered the physique of a younger man about 200 metres from the bus. They puzzled if there had been a head-on collision between the bike and the bus. As they mentioned theories and gathered proof on the spot, the second driver of the bus, Shivanarayana, turned up earlier than the police three hours later.
According to Kurnool Deputy Inspector General of Police, Koya Praveen, Shivanarayana advised the police {that a} man referred to as M. Laxmaiah was driving the bus when he ran over a motorcycle that was “already mendacity on the highway”. Laxmaiah panicked. “As the bike received caught beneath the bus between the 2 entrance wheels, it received dragged for practically 200 metres. This triggered sparks,” says Praveen, who interrogated Shivanarayana. “The flames began spreading shortly. Laxmaiah awoke Shivanarayana, who started breaking window panes with a rod. Laxmaiah fled the scene.”
Ramesh, nonetheless, wrote in his grievance, which was accessed by The Hindu, that the bus rammed into the bike “from behind”, immediately killing the bike rider. He says that is what ignited the fireplace.
Bodies of victims being taken away from the location of the accident. | Photo Credit: Nagara Gopal
An evening of revelry and tragedy
After particular groups circulated footage of the useless man on the highway and examined video footage from surveillance cameras on the path to the accident spot, the police recognized him as Shivashankar, a tile employee from Prajanagar in Kurnool city. The police made inquiries and located that he had returned dwelling on the night of October 23 from work.
According to an Inspector related to the investigation of the case, particular groups picked up 4 folks with whom Shivashankar had labored that day. One of them admitted that he had transferred ₹100 on-line to Shivashankar after midnight. The co-worker stated he had requested Shivashankar why he wanted cash in the midst of night time and Shivashankar had advised him that he was taking his good friend to Dhone, a city in Nandyal district. Shivashankar despatched his co-worker a selfie of him and his good friend.
Meanwhile, investigators discovered a video clip of Shivashankar getting his bike stuffed with petrol at a bunk minutes earlier than the accident. They noticed a younger man driving pillion. When the police despatched the picture to the co-worker, he confirmed that the younger man was the identical particular person within the selfie with Shivashankar. But the place had he gone?
Without entry to the telephone, the police relied on sign monitoring and pinpointed Shivashankar’s cellular to Tuggali, an space about 90 km from Kurnool. They rushed there and located that the telephone was with a younger man, Erni Swamy alias Nani, who had accompanied Shivashankar.
Nani admitted that he and Shivashankar had been consuming the night time of October 23 at his home in Laxmipuram, about 12 km from Chinnatekur. After getting closely drunk, that they had fallen asleep. “At round 1 a.m. Nani awoke and advised Shivashankar that he had missed a marriage at Dhone. Shivashankar stated he would drop Nani at Dhone,” says an investigator who spoke to Nani.
“Nani says Shivashankar, who was rushing on the highway, rammed right into a roadside railing. Nani was flung off the bike due to the impression and he landed in some bushes with minor scratches. He walked as much as the bike and located his good friend useless. He managed to tug the physique to the aspect. He tried to tug the bike mendacity in the midst of the highway to the aspect as properly, nevertheless it was too heavy for him,” the investigator says.
Minutes later, a bus hit the bike. A number of extra handed by. Then the sleeper bus ran over the bike and dragged it for about 200 m, explains the investigator. “Nani noticed from a distance that the bus had caught fireplace and heard screams for assist. Scared, he stayed rooted on the spot,” he says. After a while, Nani received right into a tractor and went to Tuggali, he explains.
Changing construction
The sleeper coach bus was initially registered as a 53-seater bus with the Medchal Malkajgiri Road Transport Office on August 8, 2018. When the unique proprietor determined to promote it, the V-Kaveri Travels administration bought it, explains Raghunandan Goud, Road Transport Officer from Medchal Malkajgiri district.
“Eventually, the brand new proprietor received it re-registered in Daman and Diu on March 31, 2023, reportedly after changing it right into a sleeper coach. They secured a ‘health certificates’ from there. Later, the bus was as soon as once more re-registered with the Odisha authorities on September 20. The bus was but to get the brand new registration quantity from Odisha,” says Goud.
The investigators are verifying whether or not the regulation permits transport businesses to transform seater buses into sleeper coaches. Even if approvals are secured, adjustments in seating patterns can compromise security measures, they clarify.
Officials who inspected the bus say the unique construction had been modified. The high quality of the leather-based, the seat covers, curtains, plywood and different supplies have been all of low-cost high quality, which, they imagine, triggered the fireplace to unfold quickly.
Forensic personnel and police examine the accident web site. | Photo Credit: Nagara Gopal
Zuber Ali Khan, a Hyderabad-based fireplace and forensic engineer, who examined the accident spot, says every accident is exclusive. “In this case, among the passengers could have choked to dying or fallen unconscious earlier than getting burnt. This is as a result of the smoke that emanated from the inflammable materials used for the seats and berths was extremely poisonous,” he says.
Jayant Kushwaha, 27, regularly travels between Hyderabad and Bengaluru. He says he has used the identical bus service many instances. “Maybe the bus was outdated. It seemed outdated,” he says. “The emergency window, the driving force’s cabin, all the things was jammed.”
No classes learnt
In 2013, a personal bus heading in direction of Hyderabad from Bengaluru caught fireplace. Forty-five folks, together with a pregnant girl, died within the incident, which additionally occurred on NH 44 in October.
After that incident, say a number of cops, folks advised that video and audio bulletins be made earlier than the beginning of each journey about exits and entry factors, emergency doorways, and the placement of hammers. These solutions have been submitted to the State and the Central governments. However, many survivors of the Kurnool bus accident say they didn’t find out about emergency doorways or hammers.
The Andhra Pradesh Disaster Response and Fire Services Department and the Andhra Pradesh Forensic Science Laboratory (APFSL) are conducting separate inquiries to establish the reason for the fireplace and of the way it unfold.
The Director General in cost, Andhra Pradesh Disaster Response and Fire Services, P. Venkata Ramana, says the journey bus was not run in keeping with security norms. “All the fireplace security norms have been violated,” he says. “There have been no hammers to interrupt the window panes and there was no second exit (emergency exit), which is necessary.” There was one fireplace extinguisher, which was supposed for use by the driving force. “But he fled.”
APFSL is conducting assessments of the samples collected from the bus. “As of now, we now have performed DNA sampling of the deceased and despatched the stories to the police,” says G. Palaraju, Director of APFSL. Palaraju says there have been practically 100 cellphones within the cabin. “Their batteries appear to have exploded as the fireplace unfold,” he says. The battery within the bus additionally exploded, he provides.
Palaraju says groups have collected 83 samples together with burnt baggage, seat covers, broken cell telephones, doorways, melted wind shields, and different objects for verification. “Carrying cellphones within the baggage cabin is a violation of norms,” he says. He provides that for the reason that AC was on on the time of the accident, oxygen ranges have been excessive within the sleeper coach, which triggered the flames to unfold quickly.
Forensic personnel and police on the accident web site. | Photo Credit: Nagara Gopal
The information of the bus accident has shattered the lives of Srinivas Reddy and Vijitha Reddy of Vasthakonduru village in Yadadri district of Telangana. Their daughter, Anusha Reddy, a techie working in Bengaluru, had come dwelling for Deepavali and had left on the night of October 23.
“She referred to as us round 9.30 p.m. saying she had simply boarded the bus,” recollects an inconsolable Srinivas Reddy. “She advised me she would name on reaching Bengaluru. All we received was a name from the police telling us that she had died.”
This story was edited by Radhika Santhanam
