The brakes of a government bus, allegedly running without a fitness certificate, failed and it ran over a rickshaw puller near Salt Lake's GD park on Saturday afternoon.
According to police, the driver of the S9 (Jadavpur-Karunamoyee route) bus realised his brakes were not working and started shouting to alert people nearby to move away as he veered the bus towards the GD Block park's boundary wall in an attempt to stop the vehicle by ramming into the wall.
He apparently did not see a rickshaw puller sitting on the vehicle parked along the wall.
The bus was driving from the EM Bypass-Broadway crossing near Salt Lake stadium towards Karunamoyee when it hit two rickshaws before ramming into the boundary wall of the park.
One of the rickshaws was stationary and puller Brindaban Pradhan was sitting on the rickshaw when the bus hit it before hitting another rickshaw that was parked against the boundary wall.
The broken boundary wall of the park
There were around eight passengers on the bus.
Five of them suffered injuries as the bus stuttered to a halt after ramming into the wall.
They escaped with minor injuries and were released after first aid, the police said.
An officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate's traffic wing said the driver told them that he realised that the bus was not stopping even when he applied the brakes. He then intentionally chose to ram into the wall so that the vehicle did not hit any other car or bike on the road.
Several eyewitnesses and other motorists have told the police that the driver of the bus was shouting at people to get out of the way and had kept honking to raise alarm.
"However, the driver did not realise that Pradhan was on the rickshaw that he had parked against the wall of the park and hit it," the officer said.
The injured passengers along with Pradhan and the other rickshaw puller were taken to the Bidhannagar subdivisional hospital near City Centre where Pradhan was declared dead on arrival.
The other rickshaw puller has been admitted to a hospital, another officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate said.
The fitness certificate of the government bus had expired in January and its insurance had expired in 2020, said a senior officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate who requested not to be named.
"The fitness certificate of the bus had expired in January nor did it have a valid insurance since 2020," an official of the state transport department said on condition of anonymity.
Police officers as well as officials of the transport department admitted that many “unfit” buses were operating in the city and its adjoining areas.
Some of them are more than 15 years old.
Calcutta High Court had in 2008 ordered the withdrawal of commercial vehicles aged 15 years or more.
Transport department officials said there was still no mechanism in place to automatically identify vehicles that do not have a fitness certificate.