New Delhi: Twenty-nine people were killed when the bus in which they were travelling in skidded off the six-lane Yamuna Expressway near Delhi and fell 50 feet into a large drain. Seventeen people were injured.
The 165-km-long expressway connects Noida with Agra in Uttar Pradesh. The state government-run bus, carrying 46 people, was going from Lucknow to Delhi when the accident happened near Agra this morning, the police said.
“The bus was speeding and the driver may have dozed off,” Agra District Magistrate Ravi Kumar told reporters.
In a video, a group of rescuers – their feet half buried in wet mud as they walked about the debris – are seen pulling out bodies from the twisted metal parts of the white bus, whose roof had been ripped off in the middle by the force of the impact after it smashed the safety railing and fell on the black waters of the large drain.
The injured people have been taken to hospital, said the district magistrate. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath paid his condolences and asked the authorities to give all help to the injured and the families of those killed in the accident, the Chief Minister’s Office in Lucknow said.
The Uttar Pradesh Roadways has announced Rs. 5 lakh compensation for the families of those who died in the accident.
Prasanta Patnaik