The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Narrow escape for over 20 schoolchildren

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Aug 19, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Narrow escape for over 20 schoolchildren

Staff Reporter

Mini bus overturns after hitting divider near Malakpet

HYDERABAD: Days after a kindergarten student was mowed down by a van in the city, children of a private school had a close brush with death on the busy Vijayawada highway here on Thursday. Fortunately, all of them had a miraculous escape.

The mini school bus, belonging to Gowtham Model School's Dilsukhnagar branch with over 20 students was ferrying them home when it overturned after hitting a divider on the busy Malakpet main road. Two children suffered bruises.

The bus driver, S.K. Mohammed, maintained that he lost control of the vehicle due to brake failure. It was coming downhill from a by-lane in the TV tower area around 4 p.m. when the mishap occurred. Minutes before that, the driver had stopped the vehicle to drop a student at the by-lane connected to the Dilsukhnagar-Malakpet main road.

`Brake failure'

"I applied brakes while reaching the end of the street and realised they weren't working", the shocked driver recalled. "I first thought of hitting the three-wheelers that came across, but in the nick of time turned right only to crash into the median," Mohammed said. Such was the impact that the bus fell to its right.

"I first heard a screeching sound of the wheels and then cries of children," an autorickshaw mechanic Ghouse said. He and other workers of nearby shops took out the children trapped inside and shifted the bus to a side of the busy highway.

Vehicle damaged

While the front windscreen broke into smithereens, the rear one was partially damaged. Malakpet police Sub-Inspector A. Srinivasa Rao sent the students home in patrol vehicles.

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