School van was plying with expired licence, says probe
Magisterial probe also finds that the driver of the van was moving in the wrong direction, which led to the accident
NEW DELHI: The private van, which was involved in a collision that killed a seven-year-old school girl and injured 17 schoolchildren from t wo schools on April 27, was plying on an expired licence, a magisterial probe into the incident has found.
District Magistrate (northwest) C Uday Kumar has submitted its interim report to the chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s office on school van accident. The inquiry found that the licence of the school van, which had been engaged by parents to ferry children, had expired a year back and it was plying “illegally”.
On April 27, a seven-year-old girl was killed and 17 students from two north Delhi schools were injured after a milk-tanker rammed a private school van near the Kanhaiya Nagar Metro station in northwest Delhi.
Soon after the accident, Kejriwal had ordered a magisterial probe into the incident. Following CM’S orders chief secretary Anshu Prakash had directed the northwest DM to submit his interim report within three days. The final report will be submitted in 15 days.
“The report was submitted to the chief minister’s office two days ago. The school van had completed its 15 years age — a maximum period for which vehicles can ply on city roads — in April 2017 and was illegally ferrying children. The report has recommended to register cases against the van driver and the current owner of the vehicle under sections 304 (punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 337 (causing hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others) of the IPC,” a government official said on Wednesday.
The officials said that the interim report held both the owner and the driver of school van at fault as the van driver did not have permit to run school van and also there was no fitness certificate of the vehicle.
The probe also found that the driver of the van was moving in a wrong direction which led to accident.
According to the police, the milk tanker driver was allegedly under the influence of alcohol. The police had booked the drivers of the milk tanker and the school van.