Nine people have been killed in a bus fire on the Yamuna Expressway in Greater Noida, in India’s Uttar Pradesh. The fire broke out around midnight on Wednesday. Passengers on the double-decker tourist bus had reported a burning smell a few minutes before the fire, but the driver and conductor were still smoking at the time, according to the case filed after the incident.
According to the first information report (FIR), passengers had already objected to the driver and conductor smoking inside the bus. The two laughed it off, told the passengers to keep quiet and threatened them.
Shortly afterwards, a burning smell spread through the bus. Passengers told the driver, but he and the conductor ignored it, saying such smells were common on the bus. Despite repeated requests from passengers, the driver kept driving fast without any checks and went on smoking, the FIR says.
A few minutes later, flames were seen at the front of the bus.
When the passengers began screaming in panic, the driver told them: “It makes no difference to me if you die, I won’t stop the bus,” according to the FIR.
The bus, registered in Bihar, was travelling from Delhi to Mahoba in Uttar Pradesh with more than 35 passengers on board. The fire quickly spread through the whole bus, and thick smoke made it very hard for passengers to get out.
A woman was among the dead. The fire broke out near Dayanatpur village, close to Jewar, while most passengers were asleep, and many broke windows to jump out. “I was asleep. Someone said the bus was on fire. We started screaming in fear,” one passenger told the news agency ANI. “Getting out of the bus was not easy, because smoke had covered everything. Somehow we got out.”
A preliminary investigation found that the fire started with an explosion in the bus’s air-conditioning system. It then spread rapidly through the bus after the engine’s lubricating oil caught fire.
Both the driver and the conductor survived the fire. Police have detained them.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report