Three children on their way home from school drowned in a pond when their pool car, a 22-year-old relic whose registration had lapsed seven years ago, plunged into the water body at Uluberia, Howrah, around 3.30pm on Monday.

Police identified the three as Areen Dey, 6, Ishika Mondal, 7, and Souvik Das, 11. Two other children were seriously injured and have been admitted to hospital.

Doctors at a medical college hospital in Uluberia said the injured and traumatised children were with their parents.

The car, a Maruti Omni, was 22 years old and its registration had expired in 2018. It had anyway been registered as a private vehicle and was not meant to be used commercially as a pool car.

The tragedy and the disturbing details about the car that ferried children underlined a scary truth: There may be many such dangerous vehicles out on the roads, beating the state administration’s flimsy checking mechanisms.

The car fell into the pond in Bahira, a small village under Uluberia-1 block about 42km from the heart of Calcutta.

Villagers who had jumped into the pond to try and save the children said they pushed the pool car to the bank of the pond and pulled the children out.

Those seated in the front were alive. The rescuers broke open window panes and pulled out the other three from the rear seat. They could not be saved.

The Howrah rural district police said the car was ferrying six children from a kindergarten school — Mother Marina. They said the driver had dropped off one of them moments before the
accident.

“My child saw the pool car falling into the pond and came running, crying. I ran down the road screaming for help and calling villagers,” said Mandira Mondal, mother of the child who escaped the accident.

Eyewitnesses told the police that the pool car veered off the road, fell into the pond and got submerged before the rescuers arrived. The sound of the car falling into the water alerted bystanders in Bahira.

The children were taken to the Sarat Chandra Chattopadhayay Government Medical College and Hospital in Uluberia, where doctors declared three of them dead.

“A Maruti van which was being used as a pool car fell into a roadside pond. Out of the five, three children died and two are injured. The driver of the pool car, Simanta Bag, has been arrested,” Subimal Paul, the superintendent of the Howrah rural district police, told The Telegraph.

The pool car will undergo a forensic examination followed by an inspection by a motor vehicles inspector.

A preliminary investigation by the transport department revealed that the car was registered on November 10, 2003. The car’s owner, Sanjay Hazra, a resident of Jagadishpur in Uluberia, had registered the car with the regional transport office in Howrah.

“The registration of the car was valid up to November 9, 2018. It was not supposed to be plying on the roads,” a senior official of the transport department said.

There are nearly 2,500 pool cars in and around Calcutta carrying thousands of students to different schools, and many operate without being registered as commercial vehicles and minus the mandatory safety features.

Over the past few years, the state government has repeatedly asked pool car operators to ensure they are registered as commercial vehicles and apply for permits “for carriage of schoolchildren”.

In June, the transport department issued a directive making it mandatory for owners of pool cars and all other commercial vehicles to install location tracking devices.

The pool car that met with the accident had none of these, the police said.

“The accident in Uluberia is a pointer that private cars continue to operate as pool cars, defying the state government norms,” said Sudip Dutta, secretary of the Pool Car Owners’ Welfare Association.

Local people also blamed the condition of the road for the mishap.

“The road from BahiraChowrasta to Smashanpota is in a bad shape. Repairs do happen, but the road’s condition continues to worsen,” Jagdishpur resident Abhijit Dhara said.