Bus kills six on DME: After driver, Ghaziabad police arrest bus owner for flouting norms

On Wednesday, Ravi Prakash Singh, assistant commissioner of police (Wave City), said during questioning, the driver of the bus accepted that he entered on the wrong side of the DME from near Khoda/Indirapuram

The Ghaziabad police has arrested the owner of a bus that crashed head-on into a private vehicle on the Delhi-Meerut Expressway on Tuesday morning, killing six of a family. The bus driver was arrested on Tuesday, police said.

The fatal incident took place around 6am on Tuesday when the erring bus, bearing a Noida registration number, entered the DME on the wrong side from near Khoda/Indirapuram. (Sakib Ali/HT Photo)

The fatal incident took place around 6am on Tuesday when the erring bus, bearing a Noida registration number, entered the DME on the wrong side from near Khoda/Indirapuram and drove for about 7.2km at an officially estimated speed of 90-100kmph (kilometres per hour).

Officials of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) said they have video evidence that the bus entered the on the wrong side of the DME from near Indirapuram. This is completely different from the Ghaziabad traffic police’s statement on Tuesday that the bus entered the DME from Ghazipur.

On Wednesday, Ravi Prakash Singh, assistant commissioner of police (Wave City), said during questioning, the driver of the bus accepted that he entered on the wrong side of the DME from near Khoda/Indirapuram.

“The bus was previously deployed with a school but at present it is deployed for ferrying staff of a company. Still, the bus was painted the yellow of a school bus and also sported the label ”on school duty”. The antecedents of the driver were not verified as he said that he has a case against his name in Bihar after being involved in a major accident. We are trying to get the details of that case,” the ACP said.

According to police, the bus owner, Sandeep Chaudhary, 40, has been booked with Section 120b (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code. The police have booked the driver, Prem Pal Singh, a native of Aligarh, under Sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 308 (attempt to commit culpable homicide), and 427 (causing damages) of the Indian Penal Code.

“The bus owner has a fleet of about 80 buses which are deployed with 50 different companies in Noida. Still, no verification of drivers is carried out before hiring them and there was no diversion route chart handed over to the driver despite the Kanwar diversions being in place at present. The erring bus is involved has different challans against it for traffic violations issued by the Noida police and three of these are for wrong-side driving. The driver was arrested on Tuesday. He had no alcohol detected in his system,” the ACP said.

The last rites of the six persons were performed by their family at their native place in Meerut on Wednesday.

“Those left in the family are in tears as six of their loved ones were lost to a rash act of the driver. However, we feel that action should also be initiated against the officials who were monitoring the CCTV-equipped expressway and could not alert or help stop the erring bus. Our family members have died but we do not want others to lose their loved ones too to such rash acts,” said Sandeep Yadav, cousin of deceased Narendra Yadav.

The victims of the accident were identified as Narendra Yadav, 45, who ran an electrical business at Dhanpur in Meerut, his wife Anita, 42, and their two sons, Deepanshu, 17, and Himanshu, 14. Yadav’s sister-in-law Babita, 37, and niece Vanshika, 8, were also killed in the accident. His brother Dharmendra and nephew Karthik, 5, survived, and are stable in hospital.