BENGALURU: Two girls, aged four and two, died after they were mowed down by a school bus near the police quarters in Hegde Nagar in Hennur traffic police limits around 8.10 am on Wednesday. The girls were cousins.
The accident occurred when the school bus driver was trying to escape after crashing into an autorickshaw nearby. He rammed into the scooter on which the two kids were travelling. The children fell on the road, came under the front wheels of the bus, and died during treatment.
The father of the two-year-old is a police constable attached to the City Armed Reserve (CAR). When the driver tried to escape again, policemen at the police quarters chased and stopped him. The deceased were four-year-old D Bhanu Mali Patil, who was from Lingasugur in Raichur district, and two-year-old N Varsha Mali Patil, a resident of Hegde Nagar Police Quarters.
‘Stopped my scooter to let school bus pass, but it hit us’
Varsha’s father Nagana Gowda Mali Patil is a police constable, while Bhanu was the daughter of Doddana Gowda Mali Patil, Nagana Gowda’s brother.
The bus that belonged to a private school in K Narayanapura has been seized and the school bus driver, A Mareppa (42), arrested. He is from Surapura in Yadgir district.
Nagana Gowda said he was going with his daughter and niece on his scooter to bring milk and curd. “The school bus took a sharp right turn and I stopped my scooter to allow the bus to go. But it crashed into my scooter. I fell to the left, while both the children fell to the right and came under the wheels of the bus. Both were rushed to different private hospitals in the locality. They died due to severe head injuries. The bus driver had rammed into an autorickshaw before crashing into my scooter. I had stopped my scooter, but even then the bus driver hit my scooter, causing the deaths of my daughter and niece. The driver was trying to escape when my colleagues chased and caught him,” Gowda added.
Nagana Gowda had visited his hometown just five days ago and brought Bhanu along with him to get her admitted to a school in Bengaluru.
The constable’s Honda Dio scooter and the school bus have been seized by the Hennur traffic police.
The bodies were returned to the relatives in the afternoon after the postmortem at the Yelahanka Government Hospital. They were taken to Lingasugur for the final rites.