OWNER BLAMES DEAD DRIVER FOR POOR MAINTENANCE 

A ramshackle schoolbus running on resoled tyres hit a pedestrian and a traffic signal before ramming into a pillar of the Parama flyover on Friday morning, killing the driver and leaving at least 11 schoolchildren from Loreto House injured and traumatised.

The children, with cuts, bruises and bloodied school uniform, screamed in pain and panic as the bus came to an abrupt halt on the approach to Bridge No. 4 around 7.15am. Many of the 40 students in the bus slammed face first against the backrest of the seats ahead of theirs.

Class XII student Shania Sardar, who was among those at the rear of the bus, recalls a loud sound and being flung in front as metal struck concrete. But she didn't know what had happened.

Covered in shards of glass from the shattered rear windshield, Shania would realise later that she was bleeding profusely from a gash on her chin (first-person account on Page 22). She and 10 other injured children, some of them much younger, were taken to Calcutta National Medical College and Hospital.

Driver Biswanath Samanta, 50, died of multiple injuries in the same hospital.

Doctors said all the children were out of danger - two of them required hospitalisation - but that would hardly lessen the psychological impact of the accident on hundreds of parents who send their wards to school by bus and pool cars not knowing how these vehicles are maintained and driven.

The investigating officer at Karaya police station described the 13-year-old school bus carrying students of Loreto House as being in bad shape. He said all four tyres of WB-19A-4408 had been resoled, the illegalpractice of replacing the tread on worn-out tyres with a new layer of rubber.

The police hadn't drawn up a case against the owner of the bus, Salt Lake resident Angshuman Ghosh Dastidar, until late on Friday.

When Metro contacted him, Ghosh Dastidar said no guardian had complained to him about the vehicle's condition. He claimed to be unaware that the tyres of the bus had been resoled.

"Biswanath (the driver) used to look after the bus. If the tyres were resoled, he must have done it. The guardians never complained about the condition of the bus to me."

Sources in the traffic department said there were 49 cases involving signal violation and illegal parking against the bus.

An officer of the East Traffic Guard on duty at the intersection where the accident occurred said the bus had been speeding towards Park Circus to reach Loreto House, on Middleton Row, in time for the start of school at 7.40am.

"The accident happened near the intersection of Park Circus and Topsia Road. The bus first hit a pedestrian waiting at the intersection to cross the road. The driver apparently panicked and tried to speed away, losing control of the vehicle. The bus struck the traffic signal before hitting the pillar," the officer said.

The pedestrian, Bablu Prasad, escaped with cuts and bruises.

Shinjini Gupta of Class X and Shankhalikha Mukherjee of Class IV were advised a CT scan.

Class XI student Debalina Bhattacharya's mother said her daughter, admitted to AMRI Salt Lake, had a deep cut on her right leg that required multiple stitches. "She has also broken two teeth. Doctors have said they will keep her under observation for another day."

Shankhalika Mukherjee, 9, couldn't stop crying after she was taken to National Medical College. The Class IV student had boarded the bus in Kankurgachhi around 6.30am. Her mother received a call from "an unknown number" a little over 45 minutes later, saying that the schoolbus had met with an accident.

"When we reached the hospital, she was constantly crying and refused to speak about the accident," said mother Anurita Mukherjee.

Gouri Basu, the vice-principal of Loreto House, was on her way to school when someone from the police headquarters called her office. She immediately went to the accident site.

"Since the bus is run by a private operator, we constantly tell parents that they should be careful about who they are entrusting their children with. We also advise them to take turns travelling in the bus or pool car," Basu said.

Pool car rules mandate that a guardian must accompany the students in the vehicle.

Additional reporting by Jhinuk Mazumdar and Monalisa Chaudhuri