VELLORE: An auspicious day packed with weddings turned out to be day of tragedy as rescue personnel worked hard to retrieve burnt bodies from a bus crash site at Avalur near here early on Wednesday. Mortuary vans, policemen and ambulances outnumbered civilians and mediapersons as retrieval operations at the site wound down just before dawn. The final death toll in the accident was pegged at 21.
Mortuary labourers, who worked overtime, found it difficult to remove most of the bodies as they were charred beyond anything. What they could manage was transport the bodies to Walajahpet General Hospital.
The ill-fated vehicle was an air-conditioned sleeper coach of the popular bus fleet K P N Travels, with a capacity of 26 excluding the driver, and was bound for Pollachi from Chennai. The bus departed from the Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus on Tuesday night with 22 passengers and the accident occurred at Avalur, located almost 50 km before Vellore, a little before 11 pm.
Did Urge to Vroom Prove Fatal?
Several contrasting claims of how the accident occurred are doing the rounds. Police records state the bus tumbled into a 3.5-m deep culvert after smashing the parapet of a low bridge. The bus was travelling almost half off the national highway when the accident occurred. The driver was attempting to overtake two load-laden lorries from the left.
While forensic experts have examined the wreckage of the bus after it was raised and placed on an adjacent field, initial police reports suggest that a diesel leak must have caused the primary explosion. An official said, “Diesel from the tank would have leaked inward once the bus turned on its side. Sparks from the vehicle must have set it alight and caused the explosion.”
The emergency exits got jammed into the ground and the fire quickly spread, killing all, but one passenger and the driver who managed to escape from the burning vehicle.
Even as firefighters battled the flames, 25 ambulances that were called to the scene in hope that the people inside could be saved had to return empty-handed after waiting for a few hours. Everyone inside died of asphyxiation. They also suffered third-degree burns.
Ministers Senthil Balaji (Transport), V S Vijay (Health) and K M Chinaiah (Environment) arrived at the scene by 1 am to inspect the site. North Zone Inspector General Ramesh Gudwala and Vellore Range Deputy Inspector General H Jayaram directed the operations at the site, till dawn broke.
Driver Does U-turn
The driver of the ill-fated bus, Nagarajan (52), had jumped out of the vehicle seconds before it exploded. He made his way to the Vellore-North Police Station past midnight and ‘surrendered’. He had bruises on his body, but kept telling the policemen that “when a lorry rammed into the bus from behind, I lost control of the vehicle and it crashed”. However, once the policemen sent him for treatment to the Vellore GH and brought him back close to dawn, the man had almost changed his statement entirely. Nagarajan was presented at the Walajahpet Police Station after being remanded in a local court on Wednesday evening. Only now, after a day in police custody, he recounted a version that was quite similar to the police version on record.
Shocked Kin Trickle In
A pall of gloom descended on the Walajahpet GH as families and friends of victims began to reach there in an attempt to identify their loved ones. The remains were brought to the old wing of the hospital and placed outside the mortuary. Mortuary workers then set to work, attempting to retrieve possessions like chains, watches and any patch of cloth that remained to help identify the victims.
One of the first bodies to be identified and taken home was that of Subramanian (29), son-in-law of former deputy chief minister M K Stalin’s personal assistant Elangovan. Once the news reached them, Vellore Mayor P Karthikeyan arrived at the site and was seen consoling Paavai, the young wife of Subramanian.
Throughout the day, several families arrived and were visibly shocked at the state that the bodies were in. Most of the family members broke down and remained in a state of grief till the bodies were handed over to them for the last rites. The sister of Selvaraj (53), a businessman with the khadi emporium in Kodambakkam, refused to believe that the black mass indicated was her brother. “This was one of many routine trips to Tirupur. How could this happen?” she kept crying. Selvaraj is survived by wife and a daughter.
Eventually, all the 21 passengers, who died in the accident, have been identified by their families. The relatives of one of the passengers, Divya, had flied down from Bhubaneshwar. They were the last to arrive at the hospital.
Chinnaiyan, who introduced himself as the deputy general manager of the Neyveli Lignite Corporation, quickly identified the bodies of his nephew and sister Saraswathi (60).
Senthil Kumar Kanagarajan (31), a bachelor techie working with CTS in the US, was returning home with his mother when the accident cut his stay short. Burnt IRS papers bearing his credentials and terms of employment were amongst the only items strewn near the bus after it was recovered. Also, seen were new clothes with American price tags that he must have been taking as gifts home.