Puja Daga (top) and Dilip Kumar, the arrested driver of the CRPF bus (Amit Datta)

Calcutta, April 6: A college girl was run over as vehicles in a CRPF convoy allegedly raced one another for fun through the light Sunday afternoon traffic on Maniktala Main Road.

Puja Daga, 21, was thrown off the pillion of friend Niraj Garg’s motorbike as one of the three trucks in the four-vehicle convoy hit the two-wheeler from behind. The driver slammed the brakes but the fourth vehicle, a bus, emerged from behind and crushed her to death.

Niraj and Puja, both of whom wore helmets, were travelling to Swabhumi to watch a film along with Niraj’s wife Manasi and younger brother Anup, who were on another motorcycle.

“She was my only daughter,” said Puja’s father Jugal Kishore Daga, a plastic materials dealer who has a shop in Burrabazar.

Puja, a final-year BCom student, had left her Buroshibtala home in Bally, Howrah, around 12.30pm saying she was going to a movie with Manasi and would return by 6pm.

“She looked very happy. Around 2.30, Manasi called me to say Puja had had an accident and was at Apollo Hospital.”

Doctors said Puja died of her head and abdominal injuries soon after being brought in. Niraj had minor injuries and was discharged after treatment.

The four friends had left the Gargs’ home in Girish Ghosh Road, in the same locality as Puja’s, and were near the Maniktala railway overbridge around 2.10pm when the convoy caught up with them.

After the accident, the four CRPF drivers sped away but had to stop almost immediately because the overbridge was too low for their vehicles to pass under it, said B.C. Chakraborty, Narkeldanga OC.

“Trucks and buses have to take the adjacent underpass to go to Salt Lake, but the drivers took the wrong road in their panic.”

A mob gathered and beat up the bus driver, Dilip Kumar, 40, whom police later arrested and took to hospital. The crowd smashed the windscreens of all four vehicles.

“The four drivers were overtaking each other. The traffic was thin and they were having fun,” said Ashok Das, a local youth.

The mob later stoned policemen and CRPF personnel — the three jawans and four drivers in the vehicles and a team that arrived later — and hurled three crude bombs.

“The bus driver has been arrested on the charges of rash driving and culpable homicide not amounting to murder. We have started a rioting case against the local people,” Chakraborty said. The four CRPF vehicles have been brought to Narkeldanga police station.

“The convoy had started from Kharagpur and had just dropped personnel at Howrah station. It was heading for our battalion at Sector V when the accident took place,” said Debasis Biswas, BSF deputy commandant.