Two people were charred to death after a Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) bus hit seven vehicles in Maharashtra's Nashik district on Thursday morning, police said.
The accident took place near Palse village on Nashik-Pune highway around 11.45 am, said an official.
An MSRTC bus on its way from Rajgurunagar in Pune district to Nashik apparently suffered a brake failure and hit four motorcycles and two SUVs before ramming into another MSRTC bus coming from Sinnar, he said.
"Two motorcyclists got trapped between the two buses and were charred to death as their bikes caught fire. One person received serious injuries. The bus coming from Rajgurunagar also caught fire," the official said.
Local people broke the windows of the burning bus and rescued all 43 passengers, he added.
Two fire tenders from Nashik Road fire station and one rescue van from Shingada Talao fire station were rushed to the spot and the blaze was doused, the police official said.
Some passengers in the bus which caught fire received minor injuries and were being treated at Nashik Municipal Corporation's Bytco Hospital, he said.
The names of the two deceased persons were yet to be ascertained.
"It seems that the bus coming from Rajgurunagar suffered a brake failure, but more details are awaited. Traffic on the highway was disrupted for some time due to the accident and the crowd which gathered at the spot," the official said.
On October 8, as many as 13 people had been killed and 35 injured when a private bus caught fire after colliding with a truck on Nashik-Aurangabad highway in the Nashik district.
Meanwhile, a three-member committee was appointed by the state-controlled MSRTC to probe the accident.
General Manager (traffic) Shivaji Jagtap of MSRTC told PTI that the committee, headed by divisional controller of the corporation's Nashik division, is expected to submit its report in a day or two.
The statements of conductors, drivers, bus passengers, eyewitnesses and others were being recorded as a part of the process, he said.
On the face of it, there could have been a petrol spill after the bus rammed into the bikes and a spark from the friction ignited it, officials said.
The GPS device fitted on the bus -- whose brakes apparently failed -- was non-functional, hence it was not possible to find out its exact speed at the time of the accident, they said.
The bus driver is in the MSRTC's service for seven years and had a good record, the officials added.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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