Mathura pile-up: Mother who saved 2 kids missing, relatives anxious

Mathura fog tragedy: Mother who saved 2 kids missing; anxious relatives gather outside hospitals

Gulzari made several rounds of multiple hospitals throughout the day, searching for her sister-in-law, Parvati. Caught up in a pre-dawn vehicle pile-up amid dense fog on the Yamuna Expressway in Uttar Pradesh's Mathura, Parvati managed to save her two children, but her own fate remains unknown.

Restoration work is underway as several buses and cars catch fire following a collision on the Delhi-Agra Expressway, in Mathura on Tuesday.(ANI Video Grab)

With hope fading by the hour, Gulzari frantically kept looking for his sister-in-law among the charred remains of the deceased brought to hospitals in black polybags.

Outside a Mathura facility where post-mortem examinations are conducted, he told reporters that he had a telephonic conversation after the accident with Parvati (42), who told him that she managed to push her children -- Prachi and Sunny -- out of a broken window of the bus.

Visibility was not even one metre due to dense fog at the 127th milestone on the Agra-to-Noida carriageway of the Yamuna Expressway in the early hours of Tuesday, when the pile-up involving eight buses and three smaller vehicles claimed at least 13 lives, a senior police officer said.

According to police, at least 13 people died of burns and 43 were injured when the vehicle pile-up turned into an inferno. Eight buses and three smaller vehicles collided with each other in the thick fog around 4:30 am, a police officer said.

With most of the bodies charred beyond recognition, police are now forced to rely on DNA tests to identify the victims. Three deceased have been identified so far -- Akhilendra Pratap Yadav (44) of Prayagraj, Rampal (75) from Maharajganj district and Sultan Ahmed (62), a resident of Gonda district.

Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Shlok Kumar said the remains will be matched with the DNA samples of those who are looking for their kin.

"A call was made to police at 4:02 am and a Police Response Vehicle reached the spot at 4:08 am. A second PRV reached the spot nine minutes (at 4:11 am) after the call was received. A third PRV reached the spot 13 minutes after the call," the SSP, who visited the accident site, told PTI.

Mathura District Magistrate Chandra Prakash Singh said arrangements are being made for the last rites of those whose bodies have been identified.

Locals said the sound of the collision could be heard kilometres away.

Dense fog made the rescue job difficult and lent little to no visibility to the responders.