Kurnool (Andhra Pradesh): Andhra Pradesh police Sunday confirmed that the two bike-borne persons connected to the Bengaluru-bound bus fire accident, which claimed the lives of 19 passengers, were drunk.
In the wee hours of October 24, the sleeper bus ran over a two-wheeler, which had already met in an accident, at Chinna Tekuru village in Kurnool district.
There were 44 passengers on the bus and several managed to escape.
The two-wheeler was dragged forward underneath the bus, leading to the bursting of its fuel tank and subsequent ignition and intensification of the blaze with the explosion of the bus’s two 12 KV batteries.
“We just received the forensic confirmation that the two bike-borne persons (Siva Shankar and Erri Swamy) were drunk,” Kurnool Range Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police Koya Praveen told PTI.
Though police were aware that the duo was in an inebriated condition, they did not confirm this fact as they were waiting for forensic evidence.
The DIG Saturday night said that the duo had food in a dhaba and Swamy had admitted to consuming liquor.
According to police, Shankar and Swamy had started off on the two-wheeler from Lakshmipuram village around 2 am on October 24 to drop the latter at Tuggali village in Kurnool district.
En route, the duo had halted at the HP petrol bunk near Kia car showroom to fill petrol at 2.24 am, said Kurnool Superintendent of Police Vikrant Patil.
A video of their halt at the petrol bunk went viral and Shankar was seen riding the two-wheeler rashly.
Shortly after resuming their journey, the two-wheeler skidded, resulting in Shankar falling to his right and hitting the divider. He died on the spot.
Over the past few days, the southern state witnessed widespread rainfall, leaving wet and muddy roads amid inclement weather.
When Swamy had pulled Shankar from the middle of the road and checked him, he realized that the latter had died on the spot, Patil said.
“Even as he was thinking of pulling the bike aside from the road, the bus rushed in and ran over it, dragging it forward to some distance,” said Patil.
Since Shankar’s body was pulled off the road by Swamy before the bus could run over it, it was mostly intact and not burnt like the bus victims, enabling the forensic investigation to confirm that he was drunk, said Praveen.
Following the two back-to-back accidents and the bus engulfing in a raging fire, Swamy got scared and left for his native village of Tuggali.
Later, police picked up Swamy and questioned him to unearth crucial details of the ghastly accident.
Further, Miriyala Lakshmaiah (42), the driver behind the wheel during the accident, told police that he “couldn’t see until he went near the motorbike”.
“The driver’s version was that visibility was less. ‘I couldn’t see till I went near the motorbike. I couldn’t see at all. When I heard the sound, I applied the brakes and pulled over the bus’,” said the DIG, quoting Lakshmaiah.
“And when I reversed the bus, the fire started,” Lakshmaiah told police, adding that he alighted through the fire and woke up another driver Siva Narayana.
Later, a panicked Lakshmaiah had left the accident spot, police said.
The second driver’s version was that the driver’s side door got jammed and there was also fire at the main passenger door. Narayana told police that they first broke the emergency door.
Meanwhile, he heard an exploding sound and thought that it was a tyre burst, but that was actually explosion of batteries, the DIG said.
Later, Narayana broke several other windows with a jockey rod and 19 passengers managed to escape from the bus.
Earlier, the DIG noted that the explosion of two 12 KV batteries located behind the passenger door was the major cause of the inferno.
Further, he said that the DNA profiling was completed for all the 19 bodies and they were handed over to their families.
PTI
