Eight people from Madhya Pradesh were killed and 16 injured after a bus carrying 25 passengers veered off the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway near Kota and plunged into a 15-foot roadside drain on Saturday morning. The bus was travelling from Bhopal towards Rajasthan when the crash occurred near the Simliya police station area.
The passengers were members of multiple interrelated families travelling on a four-to-five-day religious tour. Police said the bus had left Bhopal on Friday evening and was headed towards the Khatu Shyamji temple in Sikar, the group’s first destination.
The crash occurred around 6am while most passengers were asleep, according to police. Initial indications pointed to possible driver negligence or drowsiness, but the cause had not been conclusively established in the information available from the authorities.
Simliya SHO Nand Singh confirmed that eight bodies had been recovered from the wreckage. The deceased were identified as Anita, 50, her husband Rajkumar and bus driver Sachin Giri, 27, from Bhopal district; and Aruna, Vaishnavi, 25, Trisha, 22, Krishnarao, 55, and Om Suryavanshi, 26, from Betul district.
Rescue operations were launched after the bus fell into the drain, but mud and accumulated water made the work difficult. Cranes were brought to the site to lift the vehicle and remove passengers trapped inside it. Senior police and administrative officials supervised the rescue operation.
The 16 injured passengers were taken to Kota’s New Medical College Hospital and MBS Hospital. New Medical College Hospital principal Nilesh Jain said several injured people received primary stabilisation and treatment. Doctors said six of the injured were women and two were minor girls.
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, who represents the Kota parliamentary constituency, later visited the New Medical College Hospital and interacted with the injured. The immediate response involved police, hospital teams, administrative officials and crane operators working to recover passengers from the roadside drain.
The accident has also brought attention to the consequences of a high-speed vehicle leaving an expressway carriageway, particularly where roadside drains contain mud and standing water. The source report did not provide details of the road barrier, drainage design or any formal finding on whether the expressway infrastructure contributed to the crash. Police inquiries into the incident were continuing.
