Kurnool bus accident: Was it head-on collision or bus running over bike lying on road?

Did the bike rider Shivshankar ram into the private bus at Kurnool or did the bus run over the bike lying on the road after being hit by an unidentified vehicle?

That is the crucial question in the tragic Kurnool bus accident that snuffed out 19 lives in the early hours of Friday on Kurnool-Hyderabad National Highway No. 44. The tyre, skid, scratch marks on the nearly 170-metre stretch from the point where the bike rider was found dead to point of the stationary bus (in completely gutted stage) are throwing up different possibilities. 

While the Andhra Pradesh Home Minister Vangalapudi Anitha said that “an oncoming bike rider” collided against the bus, some police officers believe that was not the case. They surmise that the bus ran over the bike or hit the bike ‘which was already lying on the road’ after being hit by an unidentified vehicle.  These investigators opine that the bus accident was a consequence of an already reported hit-and-run case. Curiously, no clinching evidence was found for either of the two possible causes for the accident. It is too early to jump to conclusions before establishing proof beyond all reasonable doubts. 

First point investigators are trying to ascertain is where was the bike rider heading to in the dead of night? Inquiries indicated that he told his mother that he was going to meet a friend at Dhone. But the police officers say the bike rider, who used to live in TV9 Prajanagar colony, would not come in opposite direction to the bus if he was returning home from Dhone. 

To get a clarity, the police are trying to gather video footage of the surveillance cameras on either side of the accident spot. “We cannot say for sure he was coming from Dhone also. He might have gone to meet another person somewhere and driving in the wrong direction, the police officials say raising the scope of another possibility. 

If a bus being driven at high speed hits a bike lying on the road, it would be thrown into air or side ways. “In the present case, the bike got rammed under the front portion (that too between the two front wheels). This needs to be ascertained,” K. Ramesh Naidu, IGP, Railways and Road Safety, Telangana, said after examining the accident spot. 

If the bike rider was hit by an unidentified vehicle before the V. Kaveri travels bus plied on the route, the investigators have to face the challenge of identifying the vehicle involved in the hit-and-run case. Without conclusively proving this, they cannot claim the bike was lying on the road, is another angle. 

Normally, the Locard exchange principle would have helped investigators to understand which vehicle was at fault going by the exchange of colours from one vehicle to the other. But in this case, both the vehicles got completely burnt leaving no traces of evidence over the transfer of colours. 

Teams of forensic experts, police officers and fire services experts are working on every possible clue and evidence to ascertain facts. They require some more time and clinching evidence to prove who is at fault.