Eight dead in Karnataka as bus plunges into lake

Hassan: Parvathamma hovers over her 17-year-old son Rudresh as he lies in a hospital bed in Hassan. The young commerce student was on a bus heading to Belur in Karnataka's Hassan district on what should have been just another Tuesday morning. 

But death came unexpectedly to some of the passengers on the bus as the vehicle, carrying mainly college students, fell into a lake, swollen with recent rains. Despite help from locals, eight people died. 

Rudresh, a student of Vishwa College in Belur told us "I am not sure what happened. The bus just fell and turned over ... a rod hurt my chest. The local people helped. I was so tired. I nearly fell back into the water. But someone pulled me out."

The day was a nightmare for his mother. Parvathamma said, "I got a phone call that there was an accident. I went first to Belur, then here to the Hassan hospital. I had to look at the bodies in Belur."

The conductor of the bus died. The driver is injured and is hospitalised along with around 60 other people spread around government hospitals in Belur and Hassan.

The District Collector of Belgaum, V Anbukumar, said the bus was overcrowded. More buses will be introduced on that route immediately. The lake will also have a wall built next to it. 

The next of kin of the dead will receive Rs. 3 lakh each and the state bus corporation will pay for the treatment of the injured.  

Accidents like this are common - too common - in a country that usually sees an accident as just one more mishap on the roads. But there are lives affected, these are lives destroyed - in just one fatal moment.