‘Maiya intezar kar rahi thi’: Groom-to-be dies in Delhi bus crash while mother waited for his return

Logistics worker Mahesh was returning home in Bareilly when a reckless swerve sent the bus he was on somersaulting in the dead of the night in the national capital.

The 22-year-old was one of the two who died in the post-midnight crash near Hanuman Mandir in Karol Bagh. He was set to be married on April 20.

The other was 30-year-old Shehbaj Alam, who was returning from Jaipur with his cousin after celebrating Eid. Alam left behind a three-month pregnant wife back home in Uttar Pradesh’s Bijnor.

In the intervening night of Tuesday and Wednesday, a Delhi-bound tourist bus coming from Jaipur, allegedly being driven at a speed of around 100 kmph, went out of control at a roundabout near the temple and flipped two to three times in the air, police said.

Besides the two, the accident left 23 more injured – 13 of them in a semi-critical state.

“Maiya intezar kar rahi thi, beta subah aajayega (Mother was waiting for my son to come in the morning),” Mahesh’s mother told PTI, breaking down as she spoke about her youngest son.

The Bareilly native had boarded the bus with his 30-year-old brother Mukesh in Haryana’s Bilaspur, where they both worked.

Blood stains on Mukesh’s clothes testified to the horror of the crash.

“Despite our asking the driver several times to slow down, he did not. He was also drunk. Around 11.30 pm, he stopped the bus near an eatery, asking us to freshen up and eat. The bus halted for nearly half an hour,” Mukesh told PTI.

He claimed that the halt eventually stretched to about an hour, a period during which the driver got drunk. The bus had no functional emergency exit, he also claimed.

“My brother was trapped under the bus with many others. There was a woman whose legs were visible while the rest of her body was pinned underneath. I tried to pull people out and then took my brother to the hospital in an ambulance,” Mukesh, who managed to crawl out of the mangled vehicle, said.

The police denied the claim that the driver was drunk, citing his medico-legal report.

An officer said that while the bus did have an emergency exit, its doors jammed after the accident. A mechanical inspection of the vehicle will be conducted to ascertain any technical faults, he added.

Alam, a cloth trader in Bijnor and the sole breadwinner of his family, is survived by his wife, whom he married about a year ago and is three months pregnant, his father, aged around 70, a younger brother, and a married sister living in Delhi’s Jamia Nagar.

Zaheen, Shehbaj’s brother-in-law, told PTI that he had gone to Jaipur with his cousin to celebrate Eid and boarded the bus around 5 pm for Delhi.

“They were headed to Old Delhi Railway Station to return to Bijnor. This is sheer negligence on the part of the driver. We would not have lost him if the bus had been driven responsibly,” he said.

The bus driver, Pankaj Kumar, 26, a resident of Rajasthan’s Alwar, has been detained and is currently undergoing treatment at Lady Hardinge Medical College, the police said.

Faheem, 30, another of Alam’s relatives, alleged that the driver had been in a hurry throughout the journey.

“At one point, when one of the brothers got down, the driver sped off without waiting for the other. He refused to stop, saying he was in a hurry to complete the trip,” Faheem said.

“His haste has cost our family dearly,” he added.

Anamika Shukla, who was on the bus with her four-year-old son, and her sister-in-law, Akriti Dubey, suffered a hip fracture.

She is undergoing treatment at RML Hospital. Her child and sister-in-law sustained minor injuries.

Her husband, Shailendra Shukla, a labourer, said he rushed to the hospital after being informed of the accident.

“I was in Delhi while she had gone to Jaipur for some personal work. I came as soon as I heard about the accident,” he told PTI.

“This is a grave incident. The driver should be punished so that no other family has to go through this,” he added.

A passenger said that a few of them were returning from pilgrimage in Ajmer, while others were returning from trips to Jaipur or headed to Delhi for work or to meet relatives.

Another female passenger sustained facial injuries, while her 65-year-old father-in-law suffered a fracture in his backbone. She alleged that the driver was speeding and that the bus was not in proper condition.

“When we were nearing Delhi, we stopped at a dhaba where it broke down. It kept moving in fits and starts after that. When we reached a roundabout, the driver took a sharp turn, and that’s when the bus overturned,” she said.

The woman said there were around four to five children among the injured, and one of them was hit in the head and was in a delicate state.

The crash was reported to the police and fire brigade around 1 am, a police officer said.

The Delhi-bound bus from Jaipur has around 30 passengers on board, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Central) Rohit Rajbir Singh said in a statement.

A JCB machine stationed nearby was roped in to help lift the bus.