The bus set on fire in Patna City. Picture by Sachin

Patna, Aug. 4: Around 16 students of a city-based school had a close shave today when a mob set ablaze the bus carrying them after it hit a policeman, killing him on the spot.

With the students of St Joseph’s High School, situated in the Kankerbagh area, getting off the bus and rushing to various directions for life, the protesters vandalised and set the bus on fire near the malaria office, barely 150m from the Sultanganj police station of Patna City, around 7.30am.

The deceased, identified as Janardhan Prasad Singh, 59, was an assistant sub-inspector posted in the office of the deputy inspector-general, Nalanda. A resident of Chandi in Nalanda, Janardhan had come to Gai Ghat of Patna City to meet a relative.

“The man was crossing Ashok Rajpath when the bus hit him. He died on the spot. Within seconds, over 60 people gathered and started throwing stones at the bus. Some students were still inside and screaming for help. The driver and the conductor fled, leaving the door of the bus ajar. The students, too, managed to get off and ran towards different directions,” said Santosh, who witnessed the entire incident.

“The mob had by then grown violent and set the bus ablaze. The protesters staged a blockade on Ashok Rajpath for nearly two hours. A team from Sultanganj police station reached the spot but did nothing to control the mob. They didn’t even help the students,” he added.

The police said some students took autorickshaws, wh-ile others called up their families. “There were incidents of stone pelting and arson. The police had reached the spot and additional forces rushed to control the mob. A fire tender doused the blaze within an hour,” Mrityunjay Singh, the station house officer of Sultanganj police station, said.

The school administration claimed that another bus following the one that met with the accident carried the students to its junior section at Rajendra Nagar.

“All the students were from our high school section (classes VI to X). They left the bus after the accident. There was another bus, belonging to the junior section of the school, that was following the first one. The students got into the second bus and reached the junior section. They were later taken to the senior section, from where their parents picked them up,” Abhijeet, the caretaker of the school, told The Telegraph.

The police, though, had a different version. “There was no second bus,” the station house officer said.