Accident triggers violence on Old Madras Road

Accident triggers violence on Old Madras Road

Special Correspondent

Private bus set on fire after KAT employee is mowed down

— Photo: K. Gopinathan

Targeted: Policemen inspect the bus that was set on fire by a mob after it hit a KAT employee, resulting in her death, in Bangalore on Friday.

BANGALORE: A road accident triggered violence on Old Madras Road on Friday morning, leading to traffic snarls in the surrounding areas. The police resorted to lathi-charge and dispersed a mob that indulged in arson and stone-throwing.

Around 10.30 a.m. a private bus mowed down H. Yashodamma (45), an employee of the Karnataka Administrative Tribunal (KAT), who was riding a scooter, at the Old Madras Road-Murphy Road junction. The KGF-bound bus dragged Ms. Yashodamma, who was caught under its wheels, for some 100 metres.

On learning about the death of their colleague, angry employees of the KAT office, situated at the BDA complex on Old Madras Road, gathered at the accident spot. Several passers-by joined them.

The mob smashed the windscreens of the bus and set it on fire. The mob also blocked the busy junction leading to traffic jams in the surrounding areas for more than an hour, the police said.

Ms. Yashodamma, a resident of M.S. Palya in Vidyaranyapura and wife of a HMT employee, was on her way to office. While she was entering Old Madras Road from Murphy Road, she came under the wheels of the bus that was coming from Ulsoor side, Assistant Commissioner of Police (Traffic-East) M.B. Mallikarjuna Swamy told The Hindu.

The Ulsoor traffic police have registered a case and are on the lookout for the bus driver, who ran away after the accident, he said.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (East) Bijay Kumar Singh said they use batons to disperse the mob, which included several KAT employees.

The police doused the fire and removed the partially gutted bus from the road and restored normal movement of vehicles.

Mr. Singh said a case of rioting had been registered in the Indiranagar police station and the mobsters would be arrested in a couple of days. No other vehicle was damaged in the violence, he said.

The protesters complained that though accidents were taking place regularly at the junction, the authorities had not taken any remedial measures. They said rash driving by private bus drivers was mainly contributing to accidents on Old Madras Road. Every day hundreds of private buses going towards Kolar, and Chittoor and Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh pass through Old Madras Road.