‘Have you seen her? This is her picture’: Families search for loved ones after Noida bus fire

“They told me they were settled. I called them at 7 am, when the bus usually reaches, but they did not pick up. I tracked the vehicle online, but it was not moving. I called the bus operator and the police, but they did not tell us anything. Then I found out online that the bus had caught fire,” she said.

The family called Kailash Hospital in Noida, where the injured had been taken. “They said nobody named Saroj or Mayank was admitted there. My father keeps asking where my mother is,” Nancy said.

Late afternoon, as police officers arrived at the postmortem house, Nancy rushed towards them.

“Did you see a woman of medium height? I can describe what she was wearing yesterday. See, this is her picture,” she said, holding out a photograph of her mother.

The officer told the waiting families that nine bodies had been brought in but they were charred beyond recognition. Families could try to identify them, he added, while DNA samples would be collected to establish their identities.

Nancy was among several families waiting outside, hoping their loved ones were not among the dead.

Another woman was looking for her father, who had boarded the bus along with her brother. They were headed to Auraiya.

A few minutes past 11 pm, her brother called and said the bus had caught fire. “I took a cab and rushed to the spot… it took me an hour to reach. I thought it was a minor accident but then I saw flames engulfing the entire bus.”

“My brother is safe, but I don’t know where my father said,” she said.

Sunita Gupta (60) and her son Shashank were also missing, said a relative from Delhi waiting outside. “Their family called me, saying they hadn’t been able to reach them. I called the hospital, but they said nobody by their names was there,” he said.

Around 2.30 pm, the families finally went inside the postmortem house, handkerchiefs pressed over their faces, as they prepared to look for their loved ones.

Nancy went inside. Her brother walked anxiously outside, his hands folded.

When she emerged, her eyes fixed on him.

“I am not able to identify anyone. Only the torso and face of the remaining bodies are left. The jewellery my mother was wearing has melted. It is not there on anybody,” she said.

Her brother immediately called up a family member. “What was Mayank wearing yesterday? A white shirt and cream cargo pants?” he asked.

Turning to his sister, he said, “Did you see anyone like this?”

By late evening, some families had managed to identify their loved ones – through jewellery, distinguishing marks and, in one case, an iron rod inserted during an earlier operation.

For Sarvodaya Bharadwaj (28), the iron rod helped establish that one of the bodies was that of his father Devendra Sahay Bharadwaj’s. His mother, Rekha Bharadwaj, a survivor, was admitted to a local hospital.

Both in their 60s and residents of Hisar in Haryana, they were travelling to perform last rites of Sarvodaya’s grandmother who passed away in Uttar Pradesh’s Mahoba on Wednesday.

Showing videos of the interior of the bus sent by his father, Sarvodaya said, “I told them not to go by train. I booked them AC sleeper bus tickets. They sent me videos from inside the bus. I was tracking their bus but slept after about half an hour. From 6 in the morning, both my parents’ phones were switched off. Even the conductor’s phone was switched off.”

As he waited to take his father’s body home, Sarvodaya alleged that the bus operator misled him.

“The bus helpline told me the bus had caught fire and that all the passengers had been sent to another bus. But they did not tell me about my parents,” he said.

His mother, he said, knows what had happened. “She told me that when the bus was on fire, everyone tried to get out. She moved towards the gate and fell down while people stepped on her in their rush to get out of the bus. My father couldn’t run fast because his legs were weak.”

Another victim was 70-year-old Usha Devi, who was travelling from Delhi to Muskara after staying with her son for some time. “She had promised to come back for Navratri,” her granddaughter said.