Seven schoolchildren were killed and 20 were injured — many gravely — after a school bus fell into a drain in Mahawa village near the Indo-Pak border in Amritsar district on Tuesday afternoon.
Around 40 students of MKD DAV Public School in Attari’s Neshta village were in the bus when it hit a wall while crossing a bridge over the drain. The impact caused part of the bus to hang precariously over the drain below, prompting panicked children to rush to the front of the bus. The vehicle hung dangerously for a few minutes before it fell into the water.
A farmer grazing his animals was the first to witness the accident and sounded an alert, bringing residents from adjoining villages to the site of the accident. According to Amritsar deputy superintendent of police Amandeep Kaur, five of 11 children brought to a private hospital in Chheharta were declared brought dead. The others are currently in the hospital’s intensive care unit. Another child died in a hospital in Attar while the police confirmed one more child’s death later in the evening.
The children who died were between 7 and 12 years old. The police said their identities were yet to be established. All children are believed to belong to Dera Tibbi, Jathaul, Mahawa, Nathupura, Jheeta and Hoshiarnagar villages nearby. Rescue operations continued as divers searched the drain for the remaining children.
The residents of the area are claiming that the police reached the accident site an hour late because of shortage of staff. An ambulance from Chabbal arrived after villagers had already taken the rescued children to hospitals in their own vehicles.
Villagers also claimed that the bridge the bus was passing on was narrow and had a broken railing. They said they had asked MLAs and parliamentarians to widen the bridge but no action had been taken. Bridges on rainwater drainages are under the Army’s control.
