Bus with varsity staff falls into Maharashtra gorge; 33 dead

MUMBAI: Thirty-three staff members of an agriculture university in Maharashtra were killed when the bus they were travelling in skidded off the road and rolled down a deep gorge in Raigad district on Saturday afternoon, officials said. The private bus was carrying 34 staff members of the university on a picnic. It fell into a 500-feet deep gorge at Ambenali Ghat near Poladpur town, around 180 km from here, informed District Collector Vijay Suryawanshi.

The lone survivor, Prakash Sawant, said that mud and loose stones on that particular stretch of the ghat road caused the bus tyres to skid. Thirty-three passengers died in the accident which took place at around 12.30 pm, Suryawanshi said.

Superintendent of Police Anil Paraskar said that the passengers were on their way to Mahabaleshwar, a hill station in Satara district in Western Maharashtra, for a picnic, when the driver lost control over the vehicle while negotiating a turn and it fell into the gorge. All the bus passengers were staff of the Balasaheb Sawant Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth at Dapoli in Raigad district, he said.

“The bus veered to the left

and fell into the gorge before we could understand what was happening. Trees arrested the fall someway down. I had managed to jump out in time. I climbed my way up somehow,” said Sawant, recounting the tragedy. When Sawant reached the road, he saw a crowd of people.

“One of them gave me a mobile phone. I called up the police control room and informed them,” he said. Originally,

40 people were supposed to join the trip to Mahabaleshwar, but some of them opted out at the last moment because the bus was small and there was no space, Sawant said.

A team of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) was at the spot to pull out the bodies from the ill-fated bus. A dozen ambulances and 15 doctors were at the scene, Additional SP Sanjay Patil said.