Jaipur: When the lights inside the sleeper bus were switched off after it left New Delhi, most passengers settled into silence. Some had just returned from pilgrimage. Others had boarded midway through the journey, hoping to sleep through the long ride home to Madhya Pradesh.A few hours later, that silence was shattered by a violent crash.For 27-year-old Mayank Tomar of Etawah, the memory remains frozen in fragments. First there was a deafening impact, passengers stumbling through smoke, desperate cries from those trapped inside, and, moments later, flames swallowing the bus.Tomar boarded the Hans Travels bus at Meerut on Tuesday, bound for Indore.“The bus camefrom Haridwar. By the time we reached the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway, almost everyone was asleep and the lights had been dimmed,” he told TOI.Then came the collision . “The bus rammed into a trailer and was pushed onto the median. Those who were conscious rushed out. I dialled 100, but because I wasn’t from Rajasthan and had no idea about the expressway, I couldn’t explain exactly where we were. The police arrived in about 10 minutes.”By then, it was too late.“The fire spread very quickly. There were people standing outside, crying and screaming because their family members were still trapped inside the bus. You could hear them calling out names.”Tomar, listed among the 28 injured by police, said he escaped with minor injuries and tried to help others out before the flames made any rescue impossible.For many families, the journey home ended in loss. Rakesh Tanwar, from Ujjain, said eight members of his extended family were travelling together after visiting Haridwar. They were returning to Indore via Delhi when the bus crashed.One of them, Deepak, is still missing.His wife, Divya, who escaped with her two young children, spent hours moving between hospital wards and officials, searching for answers.Nearby, another survivor, Jitendra Pandey of Khargone, struggled to describe the final moments he shared with his wife.He woke to the impact. “When I looked, Priyanka was trapped beneath the seat,” he said. “I held her hands and pulled. Then I tried pulling her by her legs. She wouldn’t come out.”He climbed outside and tried again through the window.“Nothing worked,” he said, his voice breaking. “She burnt alive before my eyes. I couldn’t save her.”By Wednesday afternoon, investigators were still sifting through the charred remains of the bus while families waited outside hospitals for DNA identification of those whose bodies had been burnt beyond recognition.
