Three teenage sisters crossing the busy national highway to be in time for class at Amdanga madarsa, on Tuesday, were knocked down by a bus that killed two of them instantly. The third is in a critical condition in hospital.
Around 9.30 am, Saira,15, and twins Tanuja and Rangina Khatoon, both 17, were walking along the highway totally unaware that at a distance, two long-distance buses, one from Nagar Ukhra and the other from Kalyani, in Nadia district, were racing to reach the Esplanade terminus first.
After speeding abreast of each other, the two crowded buses collided sidewise near Amdanga market. Both drivers lost control. One of them veered to the left, and the other swerved to the right.
“I saw, to my horror, that the bus from Nagar Ukhra hit the three children from behind and came to a standstill a few hundred yards away,” eyewitness Abdul Hamid told the police.
Saira and Tanuja Khatoon died on the spot, while Rangina is battling for life at Nilratan Sircar (NRS) Medical College and Hospital.
A crowd soon gathered at the accident spot in Amdanga, on the northern fringes of the city, demanding police deployment to bring down the accident rate, which it claimed had soared in the past few months.
The three girls were taken to a nearby hospital in a taxi, where two were pronounced dead on arrival, while the critically-injured Rangina was referred to NRS Hospital for specialised treatment.
The mob tried to set the two buses on fire, before a local police team rushed to the site and intervened. The driver of the Kalyani bus was beaten up and handed over to the police.
A roadblock was set up at 10 am and it continued till noon. Senior police officers tried to pacify the crowd, a few hundred-strong. Things went out of hand when the crowd exchanged blows with the police.
“Why don’t you deploy policemen here? This is an accident-prone zone,” demanded a few local people. Later, sub-divisional police officer Bhuban Mondol went to the spot with a battalion of the Rapid Action Force. A mild lathicharge was ordered and the area was cleared of demonstrators around 3.30 pm.
