Baguiati: A 76-year-old woman forced to get off a bus in the middle of VIP Road was run over on Friday by another bus on the same route that was overtaking from the left.

Sumita Basu, a Narayantala resident, was declared dead at a nursing home close to the accident spot at the Baguiati crossing.

"She was unconscious when she was wheeled in... she had no pulse. She had multiple fractures and had lost a lot of blood from a head injury. We could not revive her," a doctor said.

Basu had just stepped off the footboard of the Howrah-Barasat bus on route L238 in the afternoon when the other bus on the same route run her over, police said.

The two were racing and neither stopped after the accident.

The bus that Basu was on stopped in the middle of the road and the conductor asked her to get off," Sujit Nath, an auto driver who was on the spot at the time of the accident, said.

"Moments later the second bus hit her. We heard a thud and saw her lying in a pool of blood," Nath said.

Suresh Jana, who runs a tea stall in the area, said Basu was flung in the air on impact and she landed head first on the road.

She was crushed under the rear wheels of the bus because the driver stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake, Jana alleged.

The police are scanning CCTV footage of the area to identify the buses, Amit Javalgi, deputy commissioner, headquarters, Bidhannagar commissionerate, said.

"A search is on for both drivers," he said.

Varsha Agarwal drives down VIP Road daily to her workplace in the Theatre Road area from her house near the airport. She said the buses on L238 route were a menace.

"They race each other with horns blaring continuously to intimidate others," she said. "The police do nothing to stop them."

In June, a private bus racing another fell into a ditch dug up for the construction of a subway near Golaghata.