Karnataka: Sleeper bus accident survivors recall a night of fire and fear on the highway

THe dark began the like any other long space journeying on a mysore highway. Most passengers were asleep and engines hummed steadily. Then, in a matter of seconds, a speeding truck crossed the divider and turned an ordinary trip into a scene of fire, panic and loss in Chitradurga district.Rafiq, the driver of the private bus that was hit, is now recovering in hospital with little memory of how he survived the accident. Speaking from his hospital bed, he said the truck was coming from the opposite direction at high speed.“It was over speeding. I was maintaining a speed of 60 to 70 kilometres per hour. I saw the vehicle coming from the front. I know only the vehicle hitting the bus,” he said.The impact, according to his aide, was near the fuel tank, a detail that would soon prove fatal for many on board.Rafiq said he tried to regain control when he saw the truck veer toward him. “I tried to control the bus on seeing the vehicle approaching from the opposite direction. My bus even touched the other vehicle moving next to us. I do not know what vehicle it was. But I could not control it,” he said.Inside the bus, cleaner Sadhik was asleep when the crash occurred sometime between 1.30am and 2am. The impact threw him out of the vehicle.“I was sleeping in the bus at night. At that time, I fell out of the bus due to the heavy impact. I was in a state of not knowing what had happened,” he said. When he looked up, the bus was already engulfed in flames.What happened next is a blur to him. He does not remember how he was pulled out of the wreckage as flames spread through the bus.“As soon as the accident happened, the locals rushed to our aid,” Sadhik said, adding that shock and confusion gripped everyone at the scene. The driver, he said, had also been thrown out and suffered serious injuries to his hands and legs.Just minutes earlier, another driver, Sachin, had overtaken Rafiq’s bus. His vehicle, operated by Seabird Tourists, was carrying 42 schoolchildren on a three-day trip to Dandeli. “The Seabird Tourists bus had just overtaken mine and within a minute, everything changed. There were 42 children on board, and I feared for their lives,” he said.The container truck slammed into the middle portion of the other bus, Sachin recalled, striking the diesel tank. “The container truck came and hit the middle portion of the bus. It hit the diesel tank. I tried to control my vehicle and managed to steer it to the left and stop it. The front glass broke, but nobody was injured in my vehicle,” he said.Despite suffering a head injury from shattered glass, Sachin stepped out and ran toward the burning bus.As flames climbed higher, he and others began pulling passengers out through the windows. “I was injured on my head due to the glass, but I managed to pull some people out through the bus window. A few of us got at least seven passengers to safety,” he said.Then came an explosion.“By then, there was an explosion. It became impossible to go near the vehicle,” Sachin said. One moment continues to haunt him. “One of the women I saved was pleading with me to save her child who was inside the bus. Unfortunately, nobody could go towards the bus as the flames had spread rapidly.”By the time help arrived, the fire had consumed the bus, leaving little chance for rescue. For those who survived, the memories remain vivid: the sound of metal tearing apart, the sudden heat, and the desperate cries that cut through the darkness on a quiet highway.