Seven charred to death as bus from City hits tanker

The Bangalore-Coimbatore sleeper coach, which left the City at 10.15 pm on Saturday, was gutted in an instant flare up of petrol after it rammed into the tanker ahead of it around 3:30 am on Sunday between Salem and Coimbatore, police said.

The driver of the bus, who was among those charred to death, had tried to overtake the tanker when the mishap occurred, police sources told Deccan Herald over the telephone from Erode.

While investigations on the cause of the accident are still on, sources said as the bus rammed into the tanker, the impact was big enough to cause a dent in the tanker which was said to be carrying about 20,000 litres of petrol.

Under its impact, a large quantity of petrol splashed on to the bus driver’s seat and engine which exploded into a big fire within minutes, police said.

The tanker by then had moved several hundred metres ahead, even as flames engulfed the bus rapidly.

Most of the passengers killed—five of the seven died on the spot— were seated in the front rows. The bus was carrying 32 people, including its crew, at the time of the accident, with most of its passengers boarding in Bangalore and were bound for Coimbatore.

The victims

The dead are bus driver Sashikumar (23), Muthukumar (40) of Sai Baba colony Coimbatore, Kevalchand Jain (62) of Chikmagalur, his wife Kiran Jain (54), Jayalakshmi (62), wife of Sundaram of Bangalore, and  two-year-old Kamalika, daughter of Vinod Kumar of Bangalore.

The injured include five-year-old boy Pranrao Ram, his father Rajesh Murthy (41) and his wife Madhu Kanchana (37), all from the Allahachandra area of Bangalore.        
Ashwini, a software engineer from Bangalore, travelling along with her father to attend a wedding in Coimbatore, was among the several lucky survivors.