What began as a journey of faith ended in grief on a highway in northern India on Saturday evening. Two buses running under a Punjab government pilgrimage scheme smashed into each other near the village of Naushehra Pannuan in Tarn Taran district, killing at least five people and injuring more than 15, according to local officials. Some reports put the toll slightly higher.
Early accounts suggest the crash on National Highway 54 was set off by a motorcycle. A woman and a boy riding it tried to cross the road through a gap in the central divider, and the driver of one bus swerved hard to miss them. His vehicle crossed into the opposite lane and struck the second bus head-on. The front ends of both coaches were crushed, trapping several passengers inside.
One bus was carrying worshippers home to Faridkot district after a visit to the Golden Temple in Amritsar; the other, with many women from a village in the Lambi constituency on board, was heading the other way toward the shrine. Pilgrims and a woman riding pillion on the motorcycle are among the dead. Residents and shopkeepers were first on the scene, pulling people from the wreckage before police and ambulances arrived.
Doctors moved five critically hurt passengers on to a larger hospital in Amritsar; everyone else is receiving care locally. Only three of those killed had been named by Saturday night.
The pilgrimage programme, run by the Aam Aadmi Party government, offers free trips to holy sites, mainly for older residents. Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann said he was deeply saddened and ordered the best possible care for the injured, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi also sent condolences. Opposition politician Sukhbir Singh Badal, once the state’s number two, said the deaths showed the authorities had been careless about safety on the scheme.
