Two weeks after 19 passengers on a bus were charred to death near Kurnool, police on Friday arrested the owner of the private travel agency. Vemuri Vinod Kumar, owner of V Kaveri Travels, was arrested and produced before a court, which remanded him to judicial custody.
Vinod Kumar is named as accused number two in the First Information Report (FIR). The bus driver, Miriyala Lakshmaiah, who is accused number one, is already in judicial custody. They were booked under Bharat Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) Sections 125(a) and 106(1) for causing death by a rash or negligent act.
The bus was operating between Telangana and Karnataka through Andhra Pradesh, but was registered in Daman and Diu in 2018 and re-registered in Odisha this year. The bus travel operator had also illegally altered the bus, originally meant for seating, into a sleeper coach in alleged violation of regulations.
The bus, which was carrying 46 people, including two drivers, and was travelling from Hyderabad to Bengaluru, met with the ghastly accident near Chinnatekur village on the outskirts of Kurnool in the early morning of October 24. While 19 passengers, including two children, were burnt to death, 27 passengers, including both drivers, escaped by breaking glass windows. The victims included seven people from Andhra Pradesh, six from Telangana, two each from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, and one each from Odisha and Bihar.
Police investigation revealed that the bus ran over a motorcycle lying on the road after the rider had crashed it into the road divider. The bus dragged the motorcycle for about 200 metres, and the friction, combined with fuel leakage from the bike, ignited the massive fire, which quickly engulfed the entire bus.
Police concluded that the bike rider, B Shiva Shankar (22), died after hitting the divider, while his friend Erriswamy alias Nani, who was riding pillion and escaped with minor injuries, fled the scene in a panic after watching the bus in flames.
After establishing the presence of a second person and identifying him using CCTV footage recorded at a petrol pump a few minutes before the accident, the police arrested Erriswamy from his native village, Tuggali, in Kurnool district, and he revealed the cause of the accident.
Shiva Shankar, who was riding the bike and was intoxicated, died instantly after the two-wheeler skidded and rammed into the road divider. Erriswamy told the police that he had shifted Shiva Kumar to the roadside and was about to move the motorcycle lying in the middle of the road when the speeding bus struck the bike and dragged it some distance. As the fire engulfed the bus, he panicked and fled the scene.
Also read: DNA tests of Kurnool bus fire victims to complete by Monday
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