Mahendragarh accident: ‘Drove rashly, didn’t heed to our pleas’

Tribune News Service

Geetanjali Gayatri

Chandigarh, April 11

The parents of children who got on to the ill-fated bus of GL Public School, Kanina, from Kheri Talwana succeeded in securing the keys of the bus after finding the driver drunk, but returned these after the school administration “threatened them with dire consequences”. The pleas of scared students fell on deaf ears as they urged the driver to slow down and he continued to drive rashly.

In the FIR registered against the drunk driver, the principal and the entire school administration, a Class XII student narrates her harrowing experience in the run-up to the accident in her statement to the police. The accident led to the death of six students and left 22 injured.

A resident of Kharkadan village, she states that when she and her fellow students were on their way to school in the bus (HR66 A7514) between 8.30 am and 9 am on the Unhani road near Euro school, they realised that the driver, Dharmender, was drunk.

“All the children in the bus kept telling the driver that he was drunk and that he should not drive rashly as it could lead to an accident,” she said while adding that the driver paid no heed to their pleas and continued to drive rashly.

On the Unhani road, when there were 40-45 students in the bus, he continued to drive rashly. “The bus turned turtle and hit the trees. Most of the students were injured and a few of them died on the spot,” the statement says.

The driver was handed over to the police by the public which took the injured students to the hospital. The police got a medical test of the driver conducted at the Government Hospital in Mahendragarh where the doctor found “alcohol smell present in breath’ and sent the blood sample for further testing. A case has been registered under Sections 109, 120 B, 279, 304, 336, 337 of IPC, 185 and 192 of the Motor Vehicle Act.

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