JOIN USMedak mishap: Child believed dead is alive
Confusion over the identity of a body of one of the 16 schoolchildren killed in Thursday’s accident added to the woes of a family, which had already lost a girl in the incident, after the police handed over the body of the son they hoped to find among the injured.
Another family erupted in joy after realising that the body they had buried was not that of their boy who was recovering in a hospital.
The DSP of Kistapur supervised the process of exhuming the body of one Dattu that was earlier mistaken as Darshan Goud (6). On Thursday, the body was handed over to the parents of Darshan Goud, Veerababu and Neeraja.
They initially refused to accept that it was their son but were convinced by the police and the relatives that the boy’s features have been altered due to injuries. The heartbroken parents buried the body on Thursday evening in Kistapur.
Darshan Goud, who was being treated for right lung contusion and on ventilator at the intensive care unit of Yashoda Hospital, regained consciousness and told doctor his name. All this while, Darshan was mistaken as Dattu.
While Darshan’s parents were elated after realising that their ward is alive but in a critical condition, parents of Dattu were crestfallen.
They were barely recovering from the loss of their daughter Bhuvana, elder sister of Dattu, who died in the accident.
Yashoda Hospital, where the 20 schoolchildren are undergoing treatment, issued a health bulletin saying that the condition of three children, who suffered severe head injuries and lacerations on the body, was grave. The condition of seven others was critical. The remaining children were stable and improving.
Meanwhile, the loco pilots of the Nanded-Hyderabad passenger train, Satyanarayana and Koteswar Rao, told a Telugu channel on Friday that they sounded the horn half a kilometre ahead of the unmanned level crossing. “The impact (of collision) on the bus was less because we applied the sudden breaks,” they said.
They said the school bus suddenly appeared on the tracks giving them no time to react. “We called up the emergency services and informed officers in South Central Railway,” they said, expressing anguish over the locals who manhandled them even though it was not their fault.
In another incident, 48 students had a miraculous escape in Ramachandrunipet of Krishna district on Friday morning when the rear tyres of the Chaitanya Techno School bus got separated from the vehicle.
The bus was carrying students from several villages of Khammam in Telangana and Krishna in Andhra Pradesh when the accident occurred. The children immediately jumped out of the bus and were later shifted to another bus.