Eleven persons, including three women and a child, died and 25 others were injured when a double-decker sleeper bus that was heading to Bihar rammed into a stationary truck laden with iron rods early on Monday morning in Hazaribagh district.
The accident occurred around 3.30am when the brakes of the bus, which was headed to Masaurhi in Patna district from Gumla in Jharkhand, failed. The bus, christened Maharani, was passing through Danua Valley on GT Road under the Chouparan police station limits, around 60km from the Hazaribagh district headquarters and around 150km from the state capital.
Most of the passengers were sleeping when the bus hit the truck.
Those who died included Upendra Barnwal (45), Aditya Kumar (10), Yogendra Prasad (30), Bharti Devi, (40), Ramanand Paswan (40), Bandhni Munda (30) and Shiv Shanker Prasad (30), besides four others including the driver, Mohammed Mujahid, and his assistant.
The mangled vehicle at Danua Valley, 60km from Hazaribagh district headquarters, on Monday. Pictures by Sanjay Choudhary & PTI
A local resident said most of the deceased are from Bihar, and the rest are from Jharkhand.
“Seven minutes before the accident, the driver realised that the brakes of the bus had failed and he alerted the passengers sitting near him,” said Hazaribagh SP Mayur Patel. “The driver tried his best to save the bus but failed. Most of the passengers died of internal haemorrhage. Penetration of rods into the bus aggravated the impact.”
Asked about the survivors, he said: “Those who were able to go were sent on another bus. The injured were admitted to hospital. The bodies were sent for autopsy.”
News agency PTI quoted Hazaribagh DC Ravi Shankar Shukla as saying that eight persons died on the spot, while three others succumbed to injuries in the hospital.
Chief minister Raghubar Das expressed grief over the deaths and wished speedy recovery to the injured.
A local resident said the mishap spot has seen a spate of deaths in recent times.
“In the last four months more than 30 people have died in accidents,” said the resident. “A few days ago a research scholar from US and his wife had died here. Before that, five persons travelling in an SUV died in an accident here.”
Accident spots
The state government had last year identified 16 accident-prone zones, of which six are on the 100km four-lane Ranchi-Ramgarh-Hazaribagh stretch of NH-33, opened to traffic in 2011. They include a spot where a lane branches away near Piska Mor, over 3km from Ormanjhi police
station, the stretch near busy Baharagora, about 100km from Jamshedpur, the Chuttupalu Valley that begins around 2km from Ramgarh toll plaza on the Ranchi-Hazaribagh stretch and is preceded by several hairpin bends, and Taimara Valley in Bundu, about 40km from Ranchi.