At least seven people were killed and several others injured on Thursday after a Patna-bound bus with passengers on board overturned in Jharkhand’s Hazaribag district, police said.

The accident occurred near Gorhar police station area, around 50km from district headquarters, when the bus overturned while negotiating a sharp bend, an official said.

“Seven deaths have been confirmed so far. Some more people may be trapped in the bus,” Hazaribag superintendent of police Arvind Kumar Singh said.

There were about 50 passengers on the bus which was going to Patna from Kolkata when the accident took place, another official said.

Motichand Prasad, a passenger, said his wife Rajkumari Prasad was killed in
the accident.

“We were asleep when the accident occurred in the morning. We boarded the bus in Kolkata on Wednesday for Bihar,” Prasad, a resident of Bihar’s Gopalganj, said.

Another passenger from Bihar, Sharif Ganesh Kumar, said that the accident occurred at around 6am.

“There were around 50 passengers on the bus. As the driver negotiated a sharp bend, he lost control over the bus and the vehicle overturned,” Kumar said.

A police official on the spot said that around 10 people of those injured in the accident are in critical condition.