CHENNAI: A 15-year-old Class X student, who was riding pillion with her brother on way to a special class in school, died after coming under the wheels of a speeding MTC bus in Mandaveli on Friday morning.
Ganga Devi (15), a student at Lady Sivaswamy Iyer Girls Higher Secondary School, Mylapore, was heading to the school with her brother Vigneshwaran, a B.Sc computer science student at a private college, when the mishap took place.
According to eyewitnesses, the bus on route H 51, heading towards Parrys from Chromepet, knocked down the two-wheeler while trying to overtake it on Devanathan Street in Mandaveli. Ganga was thrown off the vehicle in the impact, and came under the wheels of the bus, suffering grievous injuries.
Even as the passersby raised an alarm, the bus driver continued to move the bus. The injured girl was moved to a hospital in the vicinity where the doctors declared her dead on arrival. The body was then moved to Government Royapettah Hospital for post-mortem.
Speaking to Express, Dhanasekar, a family friend, said that the girl hailed from a poor family. Her mother, Vijaya, has been struggling to educate her children and meet both ends. “A few years ago, Ganga’s father died of blood cancer. Ever since then, Vijaya has been running the family with the meagre income she earned by working as a domestic help in some houses in the neighbourhood. Now she has lost her only girl child to the reckless driving of the MTC bus driver,” he noted.
Devi, another family friend, said that Ganga was a bright and smart girl who used to participate in every competition in the school, almost always emerging as a winner. “She was a school topper too. The family was expecting a State rank in the board exams,” she said. She had also participated in talent shows in private TV channels.
“Ganga was with us till 11 pm on Thursday. She said she would come back after the special class,” Ganga’s relative Shankar said. They were planning to celebrate her birthday on January 20, he added.
Adyar Traffic Investigation Wing booked MTC driver B Ilayarajah, 38, for rash and negligent driving. Ilayarajah, a resident of Gandhi Nagar in Chromepet, was arrested two hours after the accident.