A private passenger bus transporting students stranded in Bengaluru to Kerala met with an accident on Sunday after it collided with a water tanker. The accident took place on Karur-Salem National Highway near Ram Nagar area in Karur, Tamil Nadu, while the bus was on its way to Kottayam in Kerala. There were 24 nursing and IT students on board the bus and all of them, including the driver, were injured in the accident.
The bus collided with a water tanker that was coming from the opposite direction. Visuals of the incident show that the bus was completely damaged from the front as it collided head-on into the tanker appearing to make a turn.
All 25 injured were taken to a private hospital nearby by people present in the vicinity of the accident spot. All of the injured people received treatment at the hospital and while 24 were discharged later in the evening, one patient, believed to be the driver, was referred to another hospital for further treatment. A bus was later arranged by authorities to escort the 24 students back to Kerala.
Other than the driver, all those injured were students hailing from Kottayam in Kerala and all of them had received passes to cross the Kerala border on Sunday. They had been stuck in Bengaluru since interstate travel was prohibited in the first two phases of the lockdown. The country is under lockdown till May 17, but interstate travel is allowed for those who have entry passes.
Entry passes are mandatory to enter Kerala through check posts bordering the neighbouring states and the Kerala Chief Minister has said that till now, 54,262 passes have been issued and so far, 21,812 Keralites from other states have reached back home through five border check posts.
Meanwhile, seven people, including three who had arrived from Abu Dhabi on May 7 in the repatriation flight from the Gulf, tested positive for coronavirus on Sunday, taking the total number of people under treatment for the virus in Kerala to 20.
With this, five foreign returnees who reached the state from the Gulf as part of the Centre's 'Vande Bharat Mission' to bring back stranded Indians and expatriates in other countries, especially the GCC, due to the COVID-19 lockdown, have tested positive.
Days after the state had declared that it had flattened the curve, new cases were being reported.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, had on Saturday said the new cases were a "warning to those coming back from abroad and for other states to be on the alert."
(With PTI inputs)