The bus dangles over the pit, the bamboo scaffold breaking its fall. Picture by Amit Datta

A bus with about 30 passengers skidded on slush while speeding on EM Bypass and was left dangling over a 20-ft pit in which nine workers were laying a sewage pipe, their only protection a bamboo scaffold.

The workers, who could all have been crushed had the West Bengal State Transport Corporation bus fallen into the pit, scrambled out and joined others in rescuing the trapped passengers. Of the 15 injured who were taken to the nearby Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences, three had fractures and the rest some bruises.

The manner in which the accident occurred at Kalikapur left everyone who saw it shaken. “The bus (WB190-3937) swerved at high speed and skidded on a pile of mud that overnight rain had turned into slush. When it came to a halt, the wheels were dangling over the pit,” said Ashok Das, one of the witnesses.

Luckily for everyone on the bus and the workers in the pit, the bamboo structure did not give way under the weight of the bus.

Residents put a wooden plank over the pit and broke the windshield to bring out the passengers one by one.

“It was around 3.20pm. I saw the bus racing another and trying to overtake from the left. When it suddenly skidded off the road, I thought for a moment that it had nosedived into the pit,” recalled Chandan Chatterjee, one of the rescuers.

Manas Biswas, a passenger, said he felt the bus drifting towards the left even as the driver tried to overtake another vehicle. “I was on the left side of the bus. All of a sudden, I felt it swerving and we landed on the bamboo structure.”

A resident of Santoshpur, the computer engineer was headed for Phoolbagan. He suffered injuries in his left leg.

Private tutor Rita Biswas, 30, said she saw death “staring at us” for a split second. “I heard a thud as the bus hit the aluminium shield at the work site and then nearly crashed into the pit.”

Residents of the area said buses racing each other were common on the Bypass, which has become the second most accident-prone stretch after VIP Road.

The newly introduced speed limit for buses on the stretch is 40kmph, but most drivers do 55-60kmph. The bus involved in Sunday’s accident was possibly above the speed limit. “The driver lost control. He and the conductors escaped after the accident,” said D.P. Singh, additional superintendent of police (industrial) of South 24-Parganas.

A bus packed with passengers had skidded on slush while trying to overtake an autorickshaw from the left and plunged into the canal near Kestopur in April, killing 21 people.