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Young lives nipped in the bud

Last Updated 24 July 2014, 21:17 IST

The undercarriage of the Nanded-Kacheguda passenger train not only has flesh and blood clinging to it, but also pages and covers of notebooks of the students who were travelling in the ill-fated Kakatiya Techno School bus.

Lunch boxes, school bags, plastic carry bags and broken water bottles lay strewn along the track where the incident took place.

Nipped in the bud were bright futures of the children of mostly farmers and daily wage earners of villages like Masaipet.

The school bus picks up students from Gundredpalli, Kistapur, Islampur and Masaipet before leaving for Toopran where the school is located, just 3 km from the accident spot.

It is said that the children had called out to the driver to slow down when the bus reached the temple arch near the railway level crossing.

“The children take this ride every day. But the driver was new to the route and entered from wrong side. Some even said that he was listening to music through his earphones,” Medak District child welfare committee member Sivakumari said.

Meanwhile, the members of Kakatiya Techno School management are said to be absconding. The school is located at Viveknagar in Toopran and is one of the seven branches spread across Medak district.

It has a strength of 530 students who come from nearby villages like Masaipet. Kakatiya group has its headquarters in Hyderabad but has branches all over Telangana, including Peddapally, Shadnagar, Moinabad, Wanaparthy, Uppal and Warasiguda in Hyderabad.

School founder Jitender Reddy, who also lives in Toopran, could not be reached after the incident and the school remained closed.

After the news of the accident spread, parents, relatives and hundreds of villagers ran along the tracks and reached the spot.

Police and rescue teams had a tough time in controlling the sea of population gathered at the crime scene.

A group of ABVP workers who staged a demonstration were caned which led to stone pelting.

Local people also tried to resist shifting of bodies of the children for postmortem.
They were shouting slogans against the callous attitude of the Railways in not erecting gates at all level crossings. Traffic on NH 7 came to a halt as residents of nearby villages made a beeline to the spot.

Meanwhile, the South Central Railway has announced cancellation of Kacheguda-Bodhan, Hyderabad-Tandur, Tandur-Hyderabad passengers and Nizamabad –Kacheguda passenger. The Bodhan-Mahbubnagar, Kacheguda-Nizamabad and Nanded-Kacheguda passenger trains were partially cancelled.

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(Published 24 July 2014, 21:17 IST)

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