Three persons including a young woman were charred to death and 31 other passengers were injured, three of them seriously in a collision between an air-conditioned bus and a container truck at Nangli Village in Mulabagal taluk, about 120 kms from Bangalore, the early hours of Saturday. The seriously injured have been admitted to R.L. Jalappa Hospital in Kolar district, transport authorities from Andhra Pradesh said.
The passengers were believed to be employees of TCS in Bangalore and the woman was identified as Padma Priya (25), a native of Tirupati town in Andhra Pradesh. Most of the passengers were injured when they jumped out of the bus which caught fire after the high speed collision. The truck driver too was charred to death. The other killed person was Srinivas, an attendant in the bus.
The air-conditioned Volvo bus was on its way to Tirupati from Bangalore when the accident occurred. The container truck carrying cars suddenly swerved to the right and rammed into the bus, Mr Suryachandar Rao, the APSRTC executive director of Nellore told The Hindu over phone. The horrific accident happened around 1 am, about 35 kilometres from the Andhra Pradesh border.
“Soon after the head-on collision, flames erupted both in the container and the bus. Both the vehicles got completely gutted," Mr. Rao said. Ms. Padma Priya was sitting on seat no. 8 and it should have been easy for her jump out as fire broke out in the front end of the bus. “We suspect either she fell down while trying to scramble out or her clothes could have got stuck while escaping. But she was burnt to death", the ED said.
