Prachi Mishra and Anushka Rajvedi, Pune
18 people died and 19 more were injured on the Lucknow- Agra expressway in a road-accident. The incident took place in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh when a sleeper bus collided with a milk tanker around 5 am on Wednesday.
The sleeper bus was traveling from the city of Sitamarhi, Bihar to Delhi when the milk tanker was struck by the double decker sleeper bus. The after-effect of the collision was terrific. The police official said that the bodies were thrown out of the bus due to the impactful collision. A lot of videos surfaced on the internet after the accident and the visuals presented a gruesome scene. There were pieces of metal and glass lying on the ground near the bodies of the dead people.
“Out of the 18 dead people identified, there were fourteen men, three women and one child,” reported the Lucknow additional director general of police, S.B. Shiradkar.
The incident drew a lot of attention from the political leaders as well. Prime Minister Narendra Modi through his tweet on X announced monetary compensation of two lakh rupees to the family of deceased and fifty thousand to those injured. President Droupadi Murmu also expressed her condolences to the family members of those who died and wished the injured people to get well soon. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath, ordered the officials to properly get the injured treated as soon as possible.
The initial probe suggests that the incident occurred due to speeding by the bus driver. However, further investigations are still going on. This is the second road-accident that took place in the Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh in the same year due to speeding. In April, another such incident was reported when a truck collided with a bus leading to the death of 8 people while leaving 20 injured out of the 36 passengers on board. It was reported that the truck over sped which led to its collision with the bus. While the truck driver was arrested, the injured were taken to a hospital in the nearby district of Unnao. However, after the accident the bus driver was nowhere to be found on the scene, portraying that he fled from there.