Lucknow, February 23 Five people were killed and 45 were injured when a double-decker bus overturned near the toll on the Purvanchal Expressway here on Monday evening after the driver lost control of the vehicle, police said.
A case has been registered in the matter, and the bus driver has been detained, police said.
According to officials, 80-85 passengers were on board the bus, which was traveling from Ludhiana in Punjab to Motihari in Bihar, when the accident occurred.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (South), Lucknow, Nipun Agarwal, said that after receiving information about the accident at the Gosainganj police station, police and administration officials and ambulances rushed to the scene.
"In this accident, five people – one man, one woman, and three children – died. The injured persons have been taken to trauma centers at SGPGI and KGMU, where their condition is reported to be stable," Agarwal said.
A case has been registered in connection with the accident, he said.
Three of the deceased were identified as Birendra (30), Anjali (8), and Priyanshu (15). The identities of the two other deceased, a six-year-old boy and a 30-year-old man, were yet to be ascertained, police said in a statement.
The statement said that 14 of the injured passengers were sent to the King George's Medical University (KGMU) Trauma Centre and 31 to the Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGI) Apex Trauma Centre.
The passengers whose condition was stable were sent to their respective destinations, it said.
According to the statement, the bus driver, Sompal, a resident of Panipat in Haryana, has been detained.
Additional DCP (South) Rallapalli Vasanth Kumar said that the accident occurred at the 11.2-km mark of the expressway.
After the accident, a crane was called in to lift the overturned bus and clear the expressway.
An injured passenger told
"I left Panipat for Nepal today. The driver was driving at a very high speed. He lost control of the bus, causing it to overturn," the passenger said.