Silchar/Shillong, June 15: At least 29 people were feared killed and nine were injured when a passenger bus skidded off the road and fell into a deep gorge in East Jaintia Hills district of Meghalaya last night.

The Guwahati-bound night super bus (AS01FC7494) from Silchar met with the accident near the renowned temple of Sonapur village along National Highway 6 around 10 last night, a Meghalaya police official said.

The mishap site is 150km from Shillong, the Meghalaya capital, and around 100km from Silchar, the headquarters of Cachar district in Assam.

East Jaintia Hills superintendent of police S. Thamar told The Telegraph that 29 people had died but only seven bodies had been retrieved so far. He said search operations were suspended today because of inclement weather and the treacherous terrain but will resume tomorrow morning.

Meghalaya director-general of police Rajiv Mehta said 22 bodies were still trapped under the bus in the deep gorge.

A senior police official said only one body, that of constable Sunil Sharma of 124 battalion CRPF, has been identified. The bodies have been sent to Khliehriat community health centre in East Jaintia Hills for post mortem. Because of the terrain, bodies had to be brought downhill and taken by boat to Borsora, 2km from Sonapur, and loaded in police truck, he added.

The nine injured were shifted either to Khliehriat community health centre or to Jowai civil hospital in West Jaintia Hills district and later to North Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health & Medical Sciences in Shillong. Seven of them are Dilip Kumar, 22, of Uttar Pradesh, Sunu Singh, 19, of Tripura, Sunil Kumar, 28, of Jharkhand, Subur Ali, 27, of Kamrup in Assam, Madankumar Singh of Bihar, Sipanul Haque Mazumdar of Cachar in Assam and Una Raj of Manipur.

Sources in Cachar administration said two assistant managers of Dewan tea estate, Radheshyam Singh and V.K. Singh, as well as Asit Kumar Deb, an employee of the office of Cachar deputy commissioner, were on the bus.

Sources said the police, the BSF, the State Response Disaster Management and home guard personnel were having a tough time conducting rescue operations because of the terrain. The security personnel used ropes to descend into the 600-foot gorge. They rescued four injured persons last night.

"The terrain is such that even members of the rescue team were injured. They were hit by boulders which rolled down from the top while they were trying to bring the survivors up," Thamar said. At least three rescue personnel were injured and were brought to Jowai civil hospital, Mehta said.

Arif Uddin Laskar, the manager of Arahans Travels, the company to which the bus belonged, said from the accident site that 28 people, besides two drivers (Babu Singh of Cachar district and Jakir Hussain of Nagaon) and a handyman, had boarded the 40-seater two-by-two bus from ISBT Silchar last evening. "We are not aware if the drivers picked up any passenger en route. Our records show 28 passengers had boarded the bus," he said. Arahans Travels' day and night buses have been running along Silchar-Guwahati route since 2013.

The DGP said there were 38 people in the bus, including 35 passengers, two drivers and one handyman.

Unofficial sources said the bus driver had registered 34 passengers at Umkiang check-gate in Meghalaya.

Laskar held poor road conditions and the rainy weather responsible for the mishap. "The roads are very narrow and when another vehicle comes from the opposite direction, sometimes it becomes difficult to control the vehicle. Moreover, the tyres often skid as the road gets wet because of rain," he said.

Meghalaya police are yet to ascertain the cause of the accident, as they are giving priority to rescue work.

Many fatal accidents have taken place in the area earlier too. On January 26 this year, 10 people were killed and 21 injured when a Guwahati-bound passenger bus from Hailakandi fell into a 100-foot gorge at Tongseng village near Sonapur. In 2012, around 30 people died when an Agartala-bound night super bus from Guwahati fell into a 400-foot gorge at Tongseng crossing.

At present, National Highway 6 is the only link between Barak Valley and Guwahati as train services on the Silchar-Lumding broad gauge route have been abandoned for several days following a landslide in Assam's Dima Hasao district.

Reacting to the mishap, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted: "Deeply pained by the loss of lives caused by a bus mishap in Meghalaya's East Jaintia Hills District. My thoughts and prayers are with the families of the deceased in this hour of grief."