The sound of a sudden splash followed by the wails of a child alerted autorickshaw driver Joydeb Das to the tragedy.

He rushed to the edge of the canal and saw the wheels of the bus jutting out of the water. He sent another auto driver to the nearby Baguiati traffic guard and then joined a group hunting for iron rods to smash open the bus windows and rescue the passengers.

“We had to do something fast to get those people out alive,” Joydeb said. “Hearing screams and cries from the bus, a few of us decided to plunge into the water.”

The rescue team started smashing open the windows and tearing down metal sheets to carve out some room for the passengers to be pulled out.

Among the first to dive in was local auto accessories shopowner Rahul Prasad, who helped pull out several people and take them to the canal banks. “We worked in a frenzy, knowing that every minute wasted could mean one more life lost,” said Prasad.

The authorities were fatally slow off the blocks, but the rag-tag team of rescuers did all that it could. Take Nilkanta Byapari, who was on his motorcycle just behind the bus when it skidded off VIP Road. “With only a corner of the bus, near the driver’s seat, still above the water, I could see people craning their necks to breathe.... I dived in. I first saw one person, probably a conductor, clamber out and flee. I was able to pull out three persons, two men and a young woman.”

Nilkanta Byapari, who was behind the bus on his motorcycle and saw it skid into the canal. He was part of the rescue operation. Picture by Amit Datta

The first of the ambulances arrived around 3pm and the injured were rushed to nearby nursing homes.

By then, four policemen from the Baguiati traffic guard had joined in the rescue operations.

The first crane arrived, but it proved to be faulty. The second crane arrived soon after but if the rescuers thought the bus would be swiftly hauled out, they were mistaken. One of the crane’s two chains fixed to the hook which, in turn, had been attached to the bus, snapped as the crane started to tug it. So the process was painfully slow.

“They should have requisitioned another crane so that the two could have pulled out the bus, stuck in the mud,” said Joydeb Das. “It just shows the lack of coordination among the various wings of the administration.”

Bhabatosh Ghosh, a resident of Dum Dum Park who was involved in the rescue operation, echoed Das.

“More than 50 boys of the locality were involved in pulling people out from the canal. The local clubs provided us with the ambulances in which we rushed the injured to the hospital. We received no help from the district administration,” Ghosh said.