The charred bus that knocked down Somasree Sarkar. Picture by Pradip Sanyal

A television actress running late for an appointment with her boyfriend and crossing VIP Road while taking a call on her cellphone was knocked down by a chartered bus near Raghunathpur on Wednesday evening.

Somasree Sarkar was critically injured in the accident, the sixth on the two-lane airport road since April.

A resident of Ashoknagar in Habra, about 30km from Calcutta, Somasree was headed for a mall to meet boyfriend Raj Sengupta and his sister Babli. Residents of the locality took Somasree, who has done bit roles in Bengali television serials, to a nursing home and dialled her boyfriend’s home after finding the number in her cellphone’s call register.

The driver of the chartered bus, plying on the Esplanade-Barasat route, tried to speed away but was intercepted near Joramandir. He and the conductors fled when the people got busy with torching the vehicle. Residents then blocked Rajarhat Road, demanding the driver’s arrest.

Police said normality was restored in the area by 9. 30pm, an hour after the accident.

VIP Road is notorious for rash driving as well as jaywalking. On May 3, Saroj Majumdar from Bongaon was run over by a Maruti van at Kaikhali. Vicky Sheikh, 9, had come under the wheels of a car in the same area on April 25. A week earlier, a bus racing another knocked down a motorcyclist near Lake Town. On April 10, Purnendu Roy, in his 60s, was hit by a taxi while crossing VIP Road at Narayantala.

April had begun with 21 people dying when the bus they were in fell into the Bagjola canal near Baguiati.