Goa bus accident: 21 injured as driver loses control, veers off the road

Panaji: At least 21 passengers sustained minor accidents when a bus, ferrying stranded passengers from Bengaluru to Goa, met with an accident after the motive force misplaced management and the automobile went off the street and fell on its facet close to Gadag in Karnataka on Friday early morning.

The passengers had a harrowing time, because the 12-hour journey took over 36 hours after a aid bus — organised by Goa authorities — acquired them again residence on Saturday early morning.

The bus that met with an accident was initially despatched to Chennai to select up stranded folks from Goa after which it made an onward journey to Bengaluru for the opposite passengers from the state.

“The bus picked up the passengers from Chennai on Thursday. However, it was held on the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border for around eight hours, as the authorities were verifying the requisite approvals amid the lockdown restrictions imposed to contain the spread of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak. Around 21 of us boarded the bus from Bengaluru. It met with an accident at around 4.30 am on Friday, and we found ourselves piled up on top of each other,” stated a passenger, requesting anonymity.

“Finally, one of the passengers managed to break the rear glass and we got out of the vehicle. Fortunately, all of us escaped with minor injuries except one girl, who suffered a gash on her forehead,” he added.

Though the state authorities organized a aid bus, it arrived after 10 hours at 2 pm on Friday.

The aid bus arrived on the Karnataka-Goa border at round eight pm on Friday, however the passengers needed to wait, as per the protocol, until a police escort automobile might take them to a Covid-19 testing facility and a quarantine centre. They arrived at their vacation spot at round 5 am on Saturday.

Over 6,200 stranded folks from Goa have registered on the state authorities’s web site, urging the authorities involved to organise their return on the earliest.