KANHANGAD: Soumya, 22, a pharmacist and school friend of bride Aruna escaped the bus accident with a black eye. She was sitting in the last row. “I don’t know what happened. But I felt the bus was speeding,” she said.
Soumya was giving company to her friend Deepak in the District Hospital. He had sprained his neck and fractured his arm. They said the bus left Puttur with the bride’s guests around 11 am.
The destination was the groom’s house in Karike panchayat inside Karnataka’s Pushpagiri reserve forest, 80km away.
It was a two-and-half-hour ride, of which they have to travel 10km through Kerala to reach Karike, said Karike gram panchayat president N Balachandran Nair, who visited the accident site and met the injured in the district hospital in Kanhangad.
The accident happened at Pariyaram, 8km into Kerala. “Five-km from the accident site was the house of the groom (Prashanth Kumar),” he said.
The bus first hit the sunshade of a community hall of the Panathady panchayat, and then rammed a tree, he said. “The tree and the bus fell on the unoccupied house,” he said.
Panathady panchayat member K J James said the accident happened on a steep stretch which also has a curve. He said Rs 12 crore was set aside for Macadam tarring of the 10km stretch, but only 3km was done. “As soon as the 3km of good road ends, the steep road starts. The driver might have been taken by surprise,” he said.
Kanhangad sub-collector D R Meghasree, who conducted an official inquiry into the accident, said there was no evidence of speeding.
“But it was an old bus. When the journey started, it was fine,” she said.
Panathady panchayat president Prasanna Prasad said the steep road started 200m after the Macadam road ended, hinting that there was enough time for the driver to reduce the speed.
However, residents said there was a similar accident on the same stretch involving a passenger bus in 2018. Several persons fractured their limbs and suffered other injuries. But no one was killed in the accident, they said.