Three students of Mount Carmel College were injured when they were hit by a speeding car driven by a faculty member, in front of the college gate on Wednesday morning.
While two of the girls escaped with minor injuries, another suffered a major fracture on the right thigh. She underwent a surgery at Baptist Hospital in the evening.
Charmaine Jerome, student development officer who teaches Chemistry for the undergraduate programme, knocked down the students – Shreya Patil, Ragi, both first year pre-university students and Anupama, a first year BBM student – as she drove in.
Patil said, she, along with her friend Ragi, was walking on the service road just in front of the college gate when the accident occurred.
“We heard somebody calling out trying to alert us. We turned back. But by then, the car was just a feet from us. Before we could react, we were knocked down by it.
The wheels scraped my legs and I fell a few feet away. Ragi was caught between the car and the parapet wall of the subway. It was difficult to pull her out. We rushed her to Jain Hospital,” she said.
Ragi’s father Saggere Ramaswamy, who runs Karnataka Photo News, told Deccan Herald that he routinely dropped off his daughter and their neighbour Patil to college every morning. He said within minutes of dropping the two girls to college, he got a message and rushed back to see three girls injured. Ramaswamy shifted Ragi to Baptist Hospital.
Ragi, a Bharatanatyam dancer, was planning to have the ‘rangapravesha’ in December this year. Ramaswamy said his daughter was mentally very stressed after the accident, as to whether the injury would hamper her passion for the classical dance form. He said she was repeatedly asking him whether she would be able to dance.
Anupama, the BBM student, has suffered a minor fracture on the right limb and is being treated at Jain Hospital.
“Anupama has undergone surgery and her condition is stable now. Also, Shreya sustained bruises on her leg,” hospital sources told Deccan Herald.
High Grounds traffic police have registered a case against Jerome under Section 337 of the Indian Penal Code for causing hurt by any act endangering life or personal safety of others and Section 279 for rash and negligent driving.
A senior police official said Jerome lost control over the vehicle near a road hump just a few feet away from the college gate as she stepped on the accelerator instead of the brakes. The teacher was not available for comment.
The college authorities refused to comment.