How losing sleep helped Hyderabad man become lone survivor of the Saudi crash

TWenty-four-year-old Mohammad Abdul Shoeb could non acquire sufficiency catch some z's in the heap travelling from Mecca to Madinah, while all the other 45 passengers on board were in deep slumber; so, he moved to the seat next to the driver and was perhaps, chatting with him, to pass the time.And that alertness saved his life, as a speeding diesel tanker crashed into the bus. Shoeb, along with the driver, jumped out of the window, seconds before the bus caught fire and went up in flames, leaving all the other passengers with no chance to escape – they were all burnt alive to ashes within no time.“We got a call from Shoeb at around 5.30 am, stating that he managed to escape from the tragedy, while all the others were caught in flames. We could not reach him later, as we received the information that he got admitted to the hospital,” Mohammed Tehseen, a close relative of Shoeb, waiting for details at Haj House at Nampally, said.A resident of Natarajnagar Colony in Jhirrah of Asifnagar constituency in the old city of Hyderabad, Shoeb, working for a private firm, went on the Umrah pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia along with his parents – Abdul Khadeer (56) and Ghousiya Begum (46), besides four others including his grandfather Mohammad Moulana and three other members of his uncle.“There were four others from the same area, who stayed back at Mecca. Soon after the accident, Shoeb called up one of them and informed them about the tragedy, in which he lost parents, grandfather and his uncle’s family,” Tehseen said.He said Shoeb sustained injuries as he jumped out of the bus and he is presently in the Intensive Care Unit at a German Hospital in Madinah.18 MEMBERS OF SAME FAMILY CHARRED TO DEATHIt was a humongous loss for 35-year-old Syed Rashid, who lost 18 members of his family in the tragic bus mishap at Madinah. Among the dead are his father 65-year-old Shaik Naseeruddin (a retired railway employee), mother 60-year-old Akhter Begum, his 38-year-old brother and 35-year-old sister-in-law and their three children, Sirajuddin, who lived in the United States with his 40-year-old wife Sana, 40, and their three children, Amina Begum and her daughter, Shameena Begum and her son, and Rizwana Begum and her two children.“When I saw them off at the Hyderabad airport on November 9 for the Umrah pilgrimage, I never imagined that I would be seeing them for the last time. I told them not to travel together, especially with children. But they did not listen. At least some of them would have survived, had they heeded to my advice,” Rashid, residing next to the CPI(M) Marx Bhavan in Vidyanagar, said in a voice choked with emotion.Another relative of a five-member family said he had lost all his family members – two brothers-in-law, mother-in-law and a niece. “When I got the information from the authorities that all people present in the bus died, I was shocked. I request the government to make proper arrangements to bring the bodies to India,” he said.Relatives of the pilgrims rushed to Haj House to anxiously enquire about the details of their relatives who were travelling in the ill-fated bus. Some others rushed to the offices of travel operators and authorities as they pray for some hopeful news. For many families, the journey that began as a sacred pilgrimage has turned into heartbreaking uncertainty.According to a representative of Al Meena Travel Agency, a subsidiary of Al Makkah, at Bazarghat, as many as 20 passengers from his agency had left for Saudi on November 9. “After the prayers at Mecca, 16 of them were returning to Madina in the bus. Their whereabouts are not known,” he said in the morning, before the death of all the inmates of the bus was officially disclosed.