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A 15-year-old student waiting near the gate of his pool bus to get off fell on the road and was crushed by the vehicle’s rear wheels at Tollygunge on Friday afternoon.
The driver and his help stopped the bus after being alerted by the screams of the boy’s five-year-old brother, who was also on board, but ran away without helping the teenager.
Soumya Kanti Dhar, a Class IX student of Kendriya Vidyalaya Garden Reach, was declared dead when police took him to RSV Hospital in Tollygunge.
He had apparently lost balance when the bus made a sharp right turn from Tollygunge Circular Road into Deshapran Sashmal Road.
Shubham, a Class II student, started shouting for help the moment his elder brother fell off the bus. But after the driver and his help ran away, abandoning the 40-odd children in the bus, a hawker contacted the boys’ father using Soumya’s cellphone.
“The other students said Soumya was sitting at the back of the bus. He had come near the gate with his brother to get off as it approached Deshapran Sashmal Road, from where they would have taken an auto to their Aurobindonagar home,” said a police officer.
“I have learnt that the help was chatting with the driver, leaving the gate unmanned when my son fell off,” said the boys’ father Subrata. He lodged a complaint of negligence against the two with Charu Market police station.
“We are speaking to witnesses and probing the role of the driver and his help, who are absconding,” said a senior police officer.
The school had no link with the bus operator. “We do not arrange for buses. The parents make the arrangements themselves. The entire school is aggrieved at Soumya’s death,” said P.R.L. Gupta, deputy commissioner, Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan.
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