Howrah, July 4: A speeding minibus lost control while overtaking another from the wrong side on Bankim Setu off Howrah station this evening, broke through the concrete railings and dropped 35 feet onto the railway tracks, killing at least 11 passengers.

Nine of the 24 other occupants — trapped in the upside-down mini till they were pulled out one by one — are battling serious injuries at Howrah District Hospital and Eastern Railway Orthopaedic Hospital. Several, including driver Vivekananda Parui, are critical. “The toll may go up,” a doctor said.

Traffic is usually chaotic on Bankim Setu — which any vehicle leaving Howrah’s old station must take — especially in the morning and evening rush hours. Buses and minibuses race each other at will, and this is the third time since the mid-’90s that a bus has fallen off it.

Parui, 40, has been charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder and rash and negligent driving. He now lies unconscious at Howrah District Hospital.

The Sankrail-Howrah minibus, which was racing another, reached the flyover around 4pm, witnesses said. Spotting a sliver of space between the railings and the Botanical Gardens mini ahead, Parui tried to squeeze past his rival from the left. He had almost pulled it off when he noticed a taxi ahead of him. He braked, skidded and ploughed through the railing.

The fall was broken by the overhead rail wires, but they snapped and the bus landed on its roof in front of Howrah station’s platform No. 12.

Howrah resident Ashok Agarwal, who was walking on the flyover’s other side, said he saw the bus approach “recklessly” and an “inner instinct” told him something “terrible” was about to happen. “It was trying to overtake the mini in front in whichever way possible, now swerving right, now left.” As Parui saw his chance and made the last left swerve, Agarwal said: “I almost shut my eyes; I couldn’t bear to see what was happening.”

Overtaking, from any side, is banned on flyovers.

Passenger Akbar Midde, 38, said from his bed at the railway hospital that the bus had been speeding for a long time and the passengers had been “quite scared”.

“All the seats were occupied but there weren’t too many standing. Suddenly there was a massive jerk and we all slumped forward. Then we were suspended in air,” Midde said. As the bus landed with a “thundering crash”, he passed out.

The platform crowd rushed towards the tracks but railway officials and police quickly cordoned them off and began rescue efforts.

First, they turned off the power in the overhead wires. Then they smashed the mini’s windows with rods and began pulling the passengers out. Some local people joined in, breaking the windscreen.

“As we were pulling the passengers out, we realised some of them were already dead,” a police officer said. “They were all jam-packed inside, injured and dead sandwiched together.”

Howrah District Hospital, understaffed and unprepared for a crisis, was in chaos. All the injured were taken to the emergency ward. “We are trying to call in more doctors,” a hospital official said.

Outside, relatives waited anxiously. “Where is my daughter Ruby?” an elderly woman asked plaintively. No one knew. Ruby Biwi, 30, is recovering at the other hospital.

Railway minister Mamata Banerjee, who visited the spot tonight, said: “This is a sad and shocking incident.”

It took over five hours to cut the bus into pieces and clear the tracks. “We’ll know the exact cause of the accident in a couple of days,” Howrah SP Neeraj Kumar said.