Three-year-old girl crushed by school bus in Haryana’s Sonepat

Victim fell out of the bus on application of sudden brakes and got crushed under rear wheels of the bus she had boarded a few minutes ago

In a horrific incident, a three-year-old schoolgirl, Pratigya, a nursery student, was crushed to death under the wheels of the schoolbus she had boarded just a few minutes ago in Mehendipur village of Sonepat district on Monday morning.

Victim Pratigya(HT Photo)

The child fell from her seat, hit the grill and stairs of the bus of Saraswati Senior Secondary School, Murthal, before ultimately falling out of the bus and being crushed under its rear wheels.

The reason: The negligent bus driver had forgotten to properly lock the door of the vehicle.

What makes the incident even worse for the distraught family was that the girl’s father, Ravinder, who had come to drop his daughter to the bus stop on a motorcycle, had seen that the door had been left unlocked and had even tried to overtake the bus to warn the driver, to no avail.

“I was going in the same direction that the bus was going to. I noticed it was speeding and tried to stop the bus, to no avail,” an inconsolable father said.

He added, “The bus driver had forgotten to lock the door and applied brakes, suddenly, to avoid hitting another speeding bus on a turn. Due to this, my daughter, sitting on the front seat got her head banged on the grill and footsteps, and ultimately fell out of the door and got crushed under the rear wheels of the bus. It happened right in front of my eyes.” He rushed his daughter to hospital, where doctors pronounced her brought dead.

Based on Ravinder’s statement, the police have registered a case against bus driver Karambir of Mehendipur village under sections 279 (rash driving) and 304 A (causing death by negligence) of the Indian Penal Code. The police said he ran away soon after the accident and continues to be absconding.

The incident comes three days after a school bus in Gurugram allegedly crushed a two-year-old boy under its wheels, raising concerns over the safety of the school children during even in official transport.