‘Driver didn’t hear our screams’

KUSHINAGAR TRAGEDY Survivors say driver was on the phone when train hit van THOSE WHO WERE ADMITTED TO BRD MEDICAL COLLEGE INCLUDED NEYAZ AHMED, 22, THE DRIVER OF THE VAN,WHO IS ON VENTILATOR

GORAKHPUR: Lying on a hospital bed with an intravenous tube inserted into his arm and his right leg in a plaster cast, nineyear-old Krishna Verma shivered as he spoke about how a train crashed into the school van carrying him and other children at an unmanned level crossing near Dudhi in Uttar Pradesh’s Kushinagar district early on Thursday.

Thirteen of his schoolmates were killed and eight others were injured in the accident.

“The children kept shouting that a train was approaching fast but (driver), who was busy speaking on the mobile phone, didn’t listen to us. Then the train hit our van and I became unconscious. Then I was taken to hospital,” recalled the child, lying on a bed next to his critically injured sister Roshni, who has been kept on a ventilator in the coronary care unit after suffering head injuries and multiple fractures.

Krishna’s father Kailash Verma worried about Roshni, who is in a coma.

“I was at work when the news came in about the accident. I rushed to the spot but didn’t find my son and daughter among the bodies which were lying covered with white cloth. Somebody told me that they were taken to the community health centre. I found them there and brought them here on an ambulance,” he said.

He recalled the accident site, which was strewn with school bags, shoes, books.

Those who were admitted in BRD Medical College included Neyaz Ahmed, 22, the driver of the van, who was also on ventilator, and two other children, Sameer and Talim, both cousin brothers. Doctors said their condition was stable.

Mohammad Hassan, a daily wager who lost his two daughters — Tamanna, 8 and Sajida,10 — in the accident was near the bed on which his only son, Sameer (6) lay hooked to a ventilator.

Shocked by the deaths of his two daughters, Hassan declined to talk to journalists, but his younger brother Azmat said: “The entire village is shocked over the deaths. The kids told us that the driver didn’t stop the van despite the alarm raised by them. With earphones in his ears, he also ignored the warning of the ‘Gate Mitra’.”

A few kilometres from the accident site was a house where family members and locals were mourning the deaths of three children of one family; Amarjeet had lost all his three children — Santosh, 5, Ravi, 7, and Ragini, 8.

“Nobody had ever thought that this would happen to us. Nobody but the government is responsible for this,” he said.