Bus falls into 400ft gorge - Driver loses control, 28 men & two women among dead on Aug. 8 in Shillong.

The bus which fell into a gorge at Tongseng near Sonapur in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills district on Wednesday and (below) a Meghalaya police official holds a child injured in the accident. At least 30 people died and 26 were injured when a bus fell into a 400-foot gorge in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills district this morning. The Agartala-bound night super bus from Guwahati (AS01Y 7379) met with the accident at Tongseng crossing near Sonapur on National Highway 44 around 4.45am, a Meghalaya police official said. The site is 150km from here. Reports suggest that 36 people, besides the driver and a handyman, had boarded the 41-seater Sherawali Travels bus from Guwahati. Sources said it must have picked up the other passengers en route, since no one boarded it from the Dhankheti stop here. The injured have been shifted to Silchar Medical College and Hospital in Assam, and hospitals in Khliehriat, the district headquarters of East Jaintia Hills, Jowai, the district headquarters of West Jaintia Hills, and Shillong, the police official said. The bodies of 28 men and two women were taken to Khliehriat hospital, he added. Among those shifted to Silchar Medical College and Hospital are Madhu Das of Hailakandi town, Ajmir Singh, Dipak Mazumdar of Tripura’s Kumarghat village, BSF jawan Jugesh Kumar, Maksud Ali from Guwahati, Sanjib Banik of Agartala and Rupak Mazumdar of Kailashar town in Tripura. While Das was said to be critical, the doctors said the others were recovering. Subhashis Sarkar, 25, who is undergoing treatment at Silchar Medical College and Hospital, said the driver of the speeding bus had lost control. Sarkar, a resident of Cooch Behar in West Bengal, was returning to Agartala, where he is doing a BEd course, after sitting for a Union Staff Selection Commission exam in Calcutta. Gautam Debnath, 38, of Agartala was shifted to Woodland hospital in Shillong. His brother-in-law, Manish Debnath, said Gautam had suffered head and spinal injuries. Gautam, who works for a private firm, Amricon Agrovet Pvt Ltd, had gone to Guwahati on official work. A majority of the dead and injured are from Tripura. The state’s officials, led by Abhishek Chanda, district magistrate of Unokuti (in north Tripura), rushed to the accident site and then to Jowai hospital. Haresh Paul Choudhury, a nodal officer of Unokuti district, said the Assam chief secretary N.K. Das had informed them about the accident around 10.30am. East Jaintia Hills deputy commissioner Abhishek Bhagotia had said over phone from Khliehriat that they would be able to identify all the bodies once they got the passenger list. Meghalaya chief minister Mukul Sangma offered condolences to the relatives of the deceased and wished those injured a speedy recovery. He said the district administration would extend all possible assistance.