The Maharashtra Police suspect “human error” caused the bus accident on the Samruddhi Expressway in Buldhana district in the early hours of Saturday in which 25 passengers were charred to death, an official said.

Contrary to the driver’s claim that the private sleeper coach caught fire after hitting a divider following a tyre burst, police believe that he dozed off and lost control of the vehicle, said the official of the state highway police.

A total of 33 people were on board the bus which was going to Pune from Nagpur. The accident occurred at 1.30 am at Pimpalkhuta village near Sindkhedraja, killing 25. Eight others, including the driver and the cleaner of the bus, survived as they managed to come out of the broken window, according to the police.

After the halt for dinner at Karanja in Yavatmal district, the bus travelled around 150 kilometres up to Sindkhedraja on the Mumbai-Nagpur high-speed carriageway in about two and a half hours. This indicates the average speed of the bus was 60-70 kilometres per hour, he said.

“The speed of the vehicle may not be the issue,” he said, adding that prima facie it seems the result of a human error.

“As the driver might have nodded off, the bus went to the right side and first hit the crash barrier and then the divider,” he said.

Though the bus driver said it was due to a tyre burst, a probe is going on to ascertain whether it was due to a human error as it was dark, he said. The bus caught fire after its diesel tank burst following the accident, he said.

Meanwhile, a report by the Amravati Regional Transport Office said that a tyre burst could not have caused the accident on Samruddhi Expressway as there were no pieces of rubber or tyre markings at the scene.

The RTO report, based on survivors’ accounts, said there was no evidence (rubber pieces of tyres after burst) or tyre markings at the spot, and the impact marking was on the wheel disc, which was bent, and not on the tyre itself.

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