Forty five passengers were killed when a packed bus crashed into a barrier in Southern India and burst into flames on Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. The crash happened about 800 miles from India's capital of New Delhli.
The bus was traveling overnight from Bangalore to Hyderabad and was passing another car on the road when the bus crashed into a roadside barrier, Naven Kumar Chand, a police official said. The diesel tank caught fire after the collision, spreading flames throughout the bus, according to the AP.
According to the transportation minister of the southern Andhra Pradesh state, Botsa Satyanarayana, the driver, a bus cleaner and five passengers were able to escape through a window in the front of the overnight bus, but the other 45 passengers were locked inside the bus cabin and burned to death.
Among the victims were a baby, a couple celebrating their 23rd wedding anniversary and multiple software engineers returning home from jobs in Bangalore, according to the transportation minister Botsa.
A local police official named Pradeep told the AP the overnight bus had an automatic locking system which the driver controls. At the time of the accident, the system was locked down.
State Information Minister D.K. Aruna said only three of the 45 bodies were able to be identified due to extreme burns and authorities will have to gather DNA samples from the rest, according to the AP.
The bus driver, and the bus cleaner are being questioned by police. The bus operator Jabbar Travels will be charged with negligence, the AP reported.
Police were sent to contain peace as relatives of the dead from Bangalore and Hyderabad gathered angrily at the Jabbar Travels offices, the AP reported. Police are also searching for the bus company's owner in the nearby state called Karnataka.
With more than 110,000 car-related deaths a year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), India's roads are the most dangerous in the world. According to the AP, most accidents are blamed on reckless driving, but India roads are poorly maintained and most vehicles are extremely old.
