&#8216;My wife burned alive in front of me&#8217; &#8211; Eight dead as bus bursts into flames after Delhi-Mumbai highway crash

Deadly Highway Crash

At least eight people were killed and 25 others injured after a passenger bus collided with a lorry and caught fire on the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway in Rajasthan’s Dausa district in the early hours of Tuesday.

Footage shows police inspecting the charred remains of the bus and the damaged lorry, emergency workers clearing the wreckage, and injured passengers receiving treatment in hospital.

The bus, carrying around 37 passengers, was travelling from Haridwar in Uttarakhand to Indore in Madhya Pradesh when the crash happened between 02:30 and 03:00 local time.

Rescue Efforts

Rescue worker Deshraj Singh Gujjar said police, firefighters and emergency response teams reached the scene within minutes of receiving the alert.

“We saw a truck and a bus lying in the median here. Both of them were on fire,” Gujjar said. “Passengers were trapped […] we pulled out as many as we could and rushed them to the hospital by ambulance.”

At a nearby hospital, survivors received treatment while relatives waited anxiously for news.

One survivor, Jitendra Pandery, recounted the moments after the crash. He said he, his wife and child were returning home from a pilgrimage when the accident happened.

“When the accident happened, my wife, who was on the window side, got trapped under the bus. We tried very hard to pull her out, but she couldn’t get out. By the time we got out, she burned alive right in front of us,” he said.

Pandery said the fire spread rapidly and believed faster emergency assistance and better safety equipment on the bus might have saved her life.

“If they had arrived even a little earlier, it would have helped my wife. My wife would have made it out,” he added.

Investigation Begins

Police said six victims died in the fire after the bus was engulfed in flames, while two others later succumbed to severe head injuries. The injured remain in nearby hospitals for treatment.

The Rajasthan government has formed an eight-member inquiry committee to investigate the circumstances surrounding the crash, officials said on Wednesday.

The district collector has directed the committee to carry out a comprehensive investigation and submit its findings to the district administration as soon as possible.

Article by Viory