20 members of marriage party killed in accident

PATNA: At least 20 people, including nine children and ten women, were killed as their jeep plunged into a canal near here in the wee hours on Wednesday when they were returning from a marriage function.
    
The ill fated jeep, carrying 24 people fell into the swollen canal near Janipur under Phulwarisharif police station limit at around 1 am, police said.
    
Twenty bodies have been fished out so far, District Magistrate Jitendra Kumar Sinha said. He said two children were still reported missing and local divers have been pressed into service to retrieve them.
    
They had been to attend the wedding of daughter of Suresh Sharma near Mangopur under Alamganj police station area.
    
Sinha said the accident appeared to have occurred as the driver could not properly negotiate a turn on the road which was under knee-deep water.
   
 "The driver probably could not make out turn as water from the overflowing canal had completely submerged it. He lost track and the vehicle fell," the DM said, adding the driver was absconding.
   
Suresh Sharma, who was travelling in a mini-bus trailing the jeep, said he saw a woman flailing her arms crying for help. "I rushed and pulled the woman out, but by then the jeep had sunk into the canal with only a small part of it jutting out," he said.
    
Sharma said hearing his cries for help, the locals rushed and police came soon with a crane.
   
However, the rescue efforts were affected as the crane went stuck in the mud. A second crane was brought in which pulled out the jeep with several bodies trapped inside.
    
Union Minister Ramvilas Paswan went to the hospital to console the victims' families and described the tragedy as "not an accident but murder perpetrated by the government".
    
"I refuse to term the tragedy as an accident. It is mass murder perpetrated by the government's callousness and neglect," he said.
    
Paswan handed over a cheque of Rs one lakh for the cremation of the bodies.
    
"The Nitish Kumar government, it seems, has completely failed to govern. The drains that were dug up have not been completed before the onset of monsoon," he charged.
    
Family members and relatives of the victims were inconsolable after the incident.
    
"Who will look after me now...I am orphaned," Babloo Sharma, whose mother Gayatri (55) perished in the accident, said at the mortuary of the Nalanda Medical College and Hospital.
    
"My child is gone. For whom are we to live now," said father of another victim Ruby Kumari (25), who had married recently.
    
Bhushan Sharma, whose four-year-old son Gautam was among the victims, blamed the officials for the incident.
    
"The administration made no efforts to drain out the water nor did they put up warning danger signs to alert the driver in time to avoid an accident. They (the administration) simply left the people at the mercy of god," he said.
    
Siddheshwar Sharma, who lost her ten-year-old daughter Soni, too charged the local administration with utter neglect.
    
"So many invaluable lives would not have been lost had the administration been alert," he said.