Patna was in chaos on the morning of Friday after a road accident along National Highway 30, in Badi Pahari near Agamkuan Police Station, killed a young man, Manish Kumar, 26 years old, instantly. The high-speed bus driver and the town’s residents and bystanders were outraged at the incident and protested against the reckless driving and lack of safety measures on the busy highway.
Grief turned into unbridled fury and the situation mushroomed. Angry residents stormed the offending bus and lit it on fire as the passengers fled the scene and were forced to do so in the attempt to save their lives. The mob was in anger with the people and so it was in a state of mass destruction and many other cars were vandalized along the national highway. Police were also attacked by the mob as they arrived on the scene to respond.
The situation was also affecting emergency personnel and media personnel seeking to cover or manage the crisis. There are reports of journalists at the scene being attacked and their vehicles torched by the mob. Fire department personnel and water tender trucks rushing to extinguish the flames were forced to leave and run for their lives under attack from the mob. The gridlock paralyzed traffic on National Highway 30 and stranded thousands of commuters and passengers in an oven of heat for hours and authorities could not coordinate a response.
As the situation deteriorated, a high concentration of police from five different police stations was sent out to the site to help in the face of this crisis. Through careful planning and huge persuasion efforts, the heavily reinforced police managed to bring the crowd together to clear the crowd, put out the fires and bring the situation under control. There were people who worked hard to clear the cars that were burned down and to bring people back to the road and to get the families and friends of the bereaved to the site. Obviously, the killer bus driver escaped the scene immediately after the accident and police were at work at the scene to track the killer bus’s driver and investigate the burning vehicle and to collect criminal charges for the huge amount of arson, assault and violence.
