Incident : Bus fell into lake
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Explanation:
At least 36 people drowned when a bus crashed through a bridge's concrete railings and plunged into a lake in Murshidabad on Monday morning, a survivor alleging the driver was speaking on his cellphone when the accident happened.
The Bhandardaha lake is 15-20km long and about 100 metres wide at the spot in Balirghat village, 12km from Behrampore town, where the North Bengal State Transport Corporation bus fell into it around 7am, eyewitnesses said.
"About 10 passengers were able to scramble out of the door and start swimming towards the banks. They were rescued by local fishermen and admitted to the Murshidabad Medical College and Hospital," a district official said.
Villagers fished out four bodies initially and when the bus was pulled out in the evening, 32 bodies were found trapped inside. The survivors estimated that the bus, travelling from Karimpur in Nadia to Malda town, had 55 to 60 occupants, which means 10 to 15 are missing.
Bus fell into lake
At least 36 people died when a bus carrying over 50 passengers fell into a deep canal in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district, about 300 km north of Kolkata in the early hours of Monday.
The North Bengal State Transport Corporation (NBSTC) bus was travelling from Karimpur in Nadia district to the Malda district.
The incident took place in the Daulatabad area near the Domkal subdivision of the district.
The bus plunged into the canal after breaking the railing of a bridge. Soon, it sank into the deep waters of the canal and was not visible for several hours. A few survivors were rescued mostly by locals with boats in the initial hours after the accident. Only four bodies were found initially.
Thousands of people gathered at the site of the accident. The tardy pace of rescue work provoked rage. Two vehicles were damaged in clashes that ensued with the police.
It took several hours for National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) personnel to pull the bus out of the water with four cranes.
After dusk, when large parts of the bus had been recovered, they managed to enter the vehicle. Later in the evening, 32 bodies (20 male, 10 female and two children) had been recovered from the ill-fated vehicle. By the late hours of Monday evening, altogether 36 bodies had been recovered.