Three days after as many as five persons—all brick-kiln labourers from Jharkhand—died of suffocation in two separate overcrowded “super deluxe” buses on way from Guwahati to Agartala, police in Assam are yet to initiate any action against the erring bus owners.Though the Tripura Police claimed the Assam Police had been intimated about the matter, G P Singh, Assam Police DIG (Western Range), said no official information had come from the other state. “We have seen the reports and will take action once we get a requisition from Agartala,” Singh told The Indian Express today.While two persons died due to suffocation inside a bus run by Sherowali Travels on Thursday, three others died on Saturday inside another bus run by Puja Travels, with police confirming that the deaths occurred due to overcrowding. The dead included two women, Bijli Nakshiya (20) and Madhu Akshar (22).Both buses were travelling from Guwahati to Agartala, a journey of over 600 km through mountainous terrain, and were transporting exactly double the permitted capacity. Most of the passengers were labourers brought in from Jharkhand and Bihar to work as brick-kiln labourers in Tripura. The first incident occurred in an Agartala-bound inter-state passenger bus operated by the Guwahati-based Puja Travels that left Guwahati on Wednesday afternoon. The 35-seater bus was crammed with 73 passengers. While the bus was air-conditioned, many passengers had trouble breathing because of the overcrowding. When the bus reached Churaibari in North Tripura, some passengers had already started vomiting. Reports from Agartala said the driver refused to stop. As the bus reached Kumarghat, at least 16 passengers were already seriously ill. Three of them, Suraj Bekhora (18), Sato Maheli (19) and Ramprasad Bhagwat (18), died before reaching hospital. All of them belonged to Thanpur district in Jharkhand. Officials in Tripura have confirmed that the bus (AS-01 3577) run by Puja Travels was carrying over 70 passengers in gross violation of the Motor Vehicles Act. The other bus belonged to Sherowali Travels, a private inter-state bus operator based at Guwahati. “The police have already registered a case and initiated legal action against the erring bus company,” said SP of Kumarghat, north Tripura U K Mazumdar.
