Two hours and 45 minutes is the time the police disaster management team took to reach Kestopur as people died, trapped in the bus that fell into Lower Bagjola Canal on Friday afternoon.

All the trapped passengers would have been killed if bystanders had not mounted a rescue operation by themselves, said residents.

The first police team — four officers in a jeep — reached the spot around 2.50pm, about half an hour after the mishap. Witnesses said not one policeman got off the jeep, which turned around and left.

This prompted the residents to call up Baguiati police station. Two fire tenders arrived after 20 minutes. “Such was the indifference of the police that they did not even think that firemen cannot do much when a bus has fallen into a canal,” said Rajib Biswas, one of the rescuers.

Around 3.15pm, the first police crane arrived. It turned out to be faulty. The second came 20 minutes later and it finally lifted the bus from the canal at 4.10pm.

The local rescuers had by then extricated the trapped passengers and sent them to nearby nursing homes. The services of the third crane, which arrived at 4.20pm, were not required.

“If the policemen had brought cranes to the spot instead of passing the buck to the fire brigade, several lives could have been saved,” said Rajat Singh, a resident who, along with his friends, had joined the rescue.

“We had to requisition the disaster management team from Calcutta police, as we do not have a team of our own. This took a lot of time,” said deputy inspector-general (Presidency range) Soumen Mitra.

At Writers’ Buildings, home secretary Asok Mohan Chakrabarti refused to accept that the cranes had reached late. “We cannot predict accidents. It takes time to arrange things and reach the spot. The police did their best to rescue the passengers,” he said.

He, however, added that tracking down the driver of one of the cranes took time.

Another disaster management group, made of representatives of the army, fire department, PWD, CESC and other bodies, held mock operations at two markets in the city a couple of days back. The group was absent from the rescue on Friday.

“The team has members from several departments, so there’s hardly any coordination,” said fire services minister Pratim Chatterjee.