The mangled milk van after the mishap. Picture by Amit Datta

A milk van that would pick up commuters on the way back from a dairy depot every morning rammed into a tree and fell into a ditch with 19 people crammed into it, killing four of them instantly.

The 14 people in the windowless rear cabin of the van, a Tata 407, would have died, too, had they not succeeded in breaking the door open before water from the drain filled their lungs. Some of them have critical injuries.

Police said the accident occurred at Ramchandrapur on Narayanpur Road, about 25km from the city, at 4.30am. The victims were all vendors and fishmongers hitching a ride to Sonarpur railway station, in South 24-Parganas.

The four who died were in the driver’s cabin. Jogen Gazi, Bhakti Dhali, Ramani Mondal and the driver’s help, Ganesh Dey, were crushed by the van’s dashboard and windscreen.

“The driver, Yudhistir Biswas, miraculously escaped and fled,” a police official said.

One of the survivors said he hadn’t a clue how the vehicle careened off the road because he was huddled with other passengers in the rear cabin. “All I heard was a bang and then the light in the cabin went out. We were all thrown off balance and everyone panicked as water started seeping in,” Bapi Sapui said.

The passengers grabbed anything they could hold on to and tried to open the door. “The water level had reached my neck by the time I managed to come out of the vehicle and collapsed on the road,” Bapi said.

One of the witnesses, Nuruddin Mollah, said he noticed that the van was travelling at high speed. “There were two cycle vans headed towards Sonarpur ahead of the van. The driver swerved right to avoid hitting them and the van crashed into a tree.”

Most of the injured were taken to a nearby nursing home, where some were operated on during a power failure. Torches were the only source of light in the operation theatre.

Five were later shifted to NRS Medical College and Hospital and as many to National Medical College and Hospital.

Sapui, who sells fish in the College Street market, said he had been hitching a ride in the same Metro Dairy milk van for months. “I take a train to Sealdah from Sonarpur every morning. Transport is hard to find that early in the day, and everyone knows that the milk van will go to Sonarpur daily; so many of us hitch a ride for a nominal fare,” he said.