Young girl, 2 others charred to death

Three people were killed and 32 injured when an APSRTC bus going from Bangalore to Tirupati collided head-on with a container truck near Nangili village in Karnataka, on Friday midnight. Among the dead were a young girl Padma Priya, an attendant of RTC bus, and the truck driver. Bus-truck collision claims 3 lives Tirupati: Three people were killed and 32 injured when an APSRTC bus collided head-on with a container truck near Nangili village in the police limits of Mulbagal of Kolar district in Karnataka, on Friday midnight. Among the dead were a young girl, an attendant of RTC bus, and the truck driver. The accident occurred when the RTC's Garuda bus was returning from Bangalore to Tirupati. The container truck hit the bus carrying 46 passengers. Both the bus and the truck, which was carrying nine brand new 'Santro' cars from Chennai to a distributor in Bangalore, went up in flames. The injured passengers were admitted to government hospital in Mulbagal. They are out of danger. One of the three who was charred to death was 23-year-old Padma Priya. She was the daughter of a sanitary inspector, Srinivasa Murthy, working with TTD in Tirupati. She had completed her B.Tech at Sri Vidya Nikethan in 2011 and was selected by Tata Consultancy Services through campus interview and was posted at Bangalore. Soon after the accident, the RTC bus driver, Subrahmanyam (Tirupati Depot), called the Regional Manager A. Nagasivudu and explained the situation. The RM, the depot manager of Palamaneru and Executive Director of APSRTC, who was on inspection at Kuppam depot, arrived at the spot and made all the arrangements to admit the injured in the nearby government hospital in Mulbagal. According to the RTC Regional Manager, when the bus reached Nangili village, the car-carrier lost control and hit the bus on the left side. Perhaps the driver had tried to overtake a vehicle but after seeing the vehicle coming from the opposite direction, he made an attempt to go to extreme right, but did not do so. Instead, he took a little left since there was no place at the extreme road side, the RM explained. In the process he might have lost control over the vehicle and hit the bus. During this collision, the fuel tank of the lorry had burst and the diesel spilled over into the bus and with sparks, both the vehicles were engulfed in flames, he said. All the new cars in the container were reduced to ashes. Within seconds, dark smoke spread inside the RTC bus and suffocation forced the passengers to escape. In the meanwhile, a few young boys travelling in the bus broke the window panes and made an escape route for other passengers. A few passengers travelling in a bus behind the Garuda reached the burning bus and broke the glasses with iron rods. Sunil, an injured passenger, working as a software engineer in Bangalore, said that he along with a few other friends took initiative in making almost all passengers escape the tragic incident. The RM said that both the vehicles were reduced to ashes within minutes and each injured person was given Rs 3,000 from RTC to meet immediate medical expenses. The container truck bore Haryana registration number and the driver's details were not yet known.