Two drunk drivers of a Chennai-bound omni bus, who gave tense moments to passengers by rash driving on Sunday night, were arrested and remanded to judicial custody after passengers alerted the Virudhunagar police.
After repeated pleas by the passengers to stop the bus fell on deaf ears, one of the passengers alerted the Virudhunagar police control room.
S. Saravanan Ayyakutti, an engineer with Central government, said, “One of the passengers in the front row saw the driver lifting his hands in the air and one leg on the steering wheel even as the vehicle was speeding near Sattur. When we banged the locked cabin door, they simply did not respond.”
The drivers also used abusive language with women passengers earlier in the evening while it was proceeding to Tirunelveli. The vehicle was taken through an unscheduled route up to Tirunelveli, Mr. Ayyakutti, said quoting one of the women passengers.
The vehicle, proceeding from Nagercoil, was stopped on the highway in front of the Collectorate at 11.30 p.m. The officials found that the driver, P. Senthil Kumar (35) of Meenakshi Nagar in Madurai, and the alternate driver, R. Annadurai (61) of Nanguneri in Tirunelveli district, were fully drunk.
The police took them to the Government Hospital here in the midnight and medical tests showed high level of alcohol in their blood, Inspector of Police P. Ramnarayanan said.
The bus with sleeper facility had 33 passengers, including children and women, onboard. The bus later proceeded with another driver arranged by a passenger after a two-hour delay.
Both arrested and remanded to judicial custody
