A 12-year-old schoolboy was critically injured in a road accident near Manicktala on Wednesday morning, adding to a string of recent incidents involving minors on Kolkata’s roads.

Police said the boy, identified as Srijan Dutta, a student of Bidhannagar Municipal School, was riding pillion on a motorcycle with his father when a speeding lorry hit their vehicle from behind around 6.30 am at the Bengal Chemical crossing on Maniktala Main Road.

The impact threw both riders onto the road.

“The lorry struck the motorcycle from behind,” a police officer said.

Srijan was rushed to a private hospital, where he is undergoing treatment. His father escaped with minor injuries.

The lorry driver has been arrested and the vehicle impounded, the officer said.

The incident comes close on the heels of another tragedy, in which a 15-year-old boy cycling to school died after being hit by a bus on BT Road on November 28. Aranya Chakraborty, a Class IX student of WWA Cossipore English School, was first taken to a nearby hospital and then to RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries.

The crash occurred on the city-bound flank of BT Road between Rabindra Bharati University and Cossipore police station and was the third bus crash in seven days.

On November 26, a 60-year-old woman was killed after being hit by a bus while crossing a road in Salt Lake’s Sector V. A day earlier, another bus severed the right arm of a young woman riding pillion on a motorcycle in New Town.

According to police, the bus on route 234 was travelling from Belghoria towards Calcutta when it struck Aranya in front of 56/2B BT Road near a petrol pump. The driver fled the scene.

Police records show the private bus, registered on November 28 last year, had already accumulated at least 64 traffic-rule violations, including dangerous stoppages, signal jumping and failure to produce documents. A search is underway for the driver.

Aranya’s neighbourhood in Sashi Bhushan Neogi Garden Lane, Baranagar, mourned the teenager, remembering 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, principal of WWA Cossipore English School, described him 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 grieving parents were “too distraught” to speak.