Chandigarh:
A 14-year-old school girl was crushed to death by a speeding bus in Punjab's Muktsar on Friday. And the police, when they came to take the body for postmortem, dragged away the body instead of carrying it off in a stretcher, the villagers have alleged.
The bus, which belonged to a
transport company allegedly owned by Akali leader Hardeep Singh, popularly known as Dimpy Dhillon, was set on fire.
Arshdeep Kaur was returning home from school when the bus hit her near Channu village on Giddarbaha-Lambi road.
"The driver was speeding. The bus hit my daughter and she died," said Swaraj Singh, the girl's father.
After the incident, the family and the villagers had refused to cremate the body, blocked the road and sat on dharna, demanding the police lodge a case against the bus owner.
But instead, the police cracked down on the protesters. They opened fired at the crowd, which resisted police action.
The girl's body, the villagers said, was later dragged away by the policemen as they forcibly took it for postmortem. They also alleged that it was the police and not locals who set fire to the bus.
"First they tried to snatch the body and dragged it for about 150 meters and when we resisted, the police opened fire," said one of the villagers, Gurshiminder Singh.
The police have denied the charge. "The allegations of police excesses are baseless. We didn't use force on the villagers, the driver has been booked... we are investigating the matter," said KS Chahal, a senior officer of Muktsar.
The family agreed to cremate the girl after they were given an ex gratia of Rs 10 lakh by the government.
This is the fourth incident in which buses of transport companies allegedly linked to politicians have been involved in accidents.
In May, a teenage girl was molested and thrown down in Moga from a moving bus allegedly belonging to Orbit Company, which is reportedly owned by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal's family. The incident had triggered a huge public outcry.
In July, another luxury bus allegedly belonging to a transport company of the Badals hit a cyclist near Kurali, killing him on the spot. The administration had to pay a huge compensation to the victim's family to lift traffic blockade on the highway.
In August, a bus - allegedly belonging to a transport company owned by the Badal family hit a car and caused a pile-up in which two motor cyclists were injured.