A 15-year-old boy cycling to his school died when a bus hit him from behind on BT Road on Friday morning.
Aranya Chakraborty, a student of Class IX, was rushed to a nearby hospital and then to RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries.
The accident, which took place on the city-bound flank of BT Road between the Rabindra Bharati University and Cossipore police station, was the third bus crash in the past seven days.
On Wednesday, a 60-year-old woman was killed by a bus that ploughed into her while she was trying to cross a road in Salt Lake’s Sector V. A day earlier, a bus severed the right arm of a young woman riding pillion on a motorcycle in New Town.
On Friday, the bus on route 234 was going from Belghoria towards Calcutta when it hit Aranya, who was on his way to WWA Cossipore English School in Dum Dum from his home in Baranagar. The driver fled the scene after the accident.
“The bus hit the boy in front of 56/2B BT Road, near a petrol pump. The boy was rushed to a private hospital and then to RG Kar. However, he did not survive the multiple injuries he had sustained. The bus has been impounded,” said an officer of the traffic department.
The private bus, registered on November 28 last year, had already been involved in at least 64 traffic-rule violations, according to police records.
The violations include stopping dangerously on the road, flouting traffic signals and failing to produce documents.
The traffic police have taken up the probe and a search is under way for the driver.
Aranya’s neighbours at Sashi Bhushan Neogi Garden Lane in Baranagar remembered him as “a good boy”.
“He (Aranya) would go to school on his cycle every day. I have never seen him breaking any traffic rule,” said a neighbour.
Abhijit Ray, the principal of WWA Cossipore English School, described Aranya as a “bright boy”.
“We learned about the tragedy around noon. He was very good at his studies,” Ray told this newspaper.
One of Aranya’s cousins said the bereaved parents were “too distraught” to speak.
