“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.” It was a close shave for Sachin and the children in his bus on Thursday morning, as they narrowly escaped being hit by the container truck that rammed into a private bus in Karnataka’s Chitradurga district, killing at least nine people.
As the bus caught fire, Sachin emerged as an unlikely hero—steering his vehicle to safety despite a head injury, and then racing against time to pull seven passengers out of the burning vehicle before an explosion made further rescue impossible.
Speaking to the media, Sachin revealed how the accident occurred. “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. The 42 children on board his bus were on a three-day school trip and were heading to Dhandeli.
“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, but by then, there was an explosion. It became impossible to go near the vehicle. 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,” he added.
Ravikanthe Gowda, Inspector General of Police, Eastern Range, said that according to the preliminary reports, the container truck driver was among the nine dead. “We have shifted the injured to hospitals nearby. One of them who sustained burn injuries was shifted to Victoria Hospital in Bengaluru,” he said.
“We suspect that the container hit the diesel tank, which led to the fire. While 12 injured passengers were shifted to a Hiriyur hospital, nine were shifted to Sira, and three to Tumakuru. The patient from Sira hospital was later shifted to Victoria Hospital,” he added.
There were 29 passengers on board, apart from a driver and a cleaner. Many of the passengers were heading to Gokarna to enjoy the long weekend holiday due to Christmas, the police said.