30 feared dead as bus falls into 500-foot gorge in Meghalaya

GUWAHATI: Some 30 people were feared dead after a bus travelling from Assam’s Silchar town to Guwahati fell into a 500-foot gorge in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills

GUWAHATI: Some 30 people were feared dead after a bus travelling from Assam’s Silchar town to Guwahati fell into a 500-foot gorge in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills district Tuesday night.

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Lethindra Sangma, the district’s additional superintendent of police, said a team rescued nine people till Wednesday afternoon. Their condition is critical. Three of the injured were Central Reserve Police Force personnel.

“Night buses generally have 35-40 people, and the gorge is so deep and steep that the chances of survival of most of the passengers are slim,” he told HT from district headquarters Khliehriat, 60km from Sonapur Mandir from where the bus fell around 9.45pm.

The spot, landslide and accident-prone, is near Meghalaya’s border with southern Assam’s Barak Valley.

District officials said slippery conditions because of overnight rain have slowed the rescue team down. A rescue team comprising the police, members of Meghalaya Civil Defence and local villagers used ropes to slide down and reach the survivors. Three of the rescuers were injured in the process, one of them seriously.

“We havenot been able to ascertain the cause of the accident. Given the difficulty in reaching the spot where the bus has fallen, the death toll cannot be confirmed now,” district superintendent of police Spill Thamar said.

A senior police officer, however, said six bodies were retrieved till Wednesday evening. “The bodies transported by boats (on river Lukha flowing near the Bangladesh border) to a point where they would be driven to Khliehriat for postmortem,” he said.