Nine people, including a 6-year-old boy, were injured on Tuesday after a cluster bus rammed into a taxi and hit pavement dwellers on Rohtak road in central Delhi, police said. The injured were identified as Kala Devi (65), Sunita (35), Aarti (30) and Aryaman (6), Mangat Ram (60), Chand Khan (23), Anjali and Asha Devi -- all of whom stayed in shanties erected on the pavement. A bus passenger, Ramesh, was also injured, they said.
The police had earlier inadvertently mentioned that the child injured in the incident was 3-year-old. The incident took place when the bus driver lost control of the vehicle on the Nangloi-Old Delhi railway station route after which it rammed into a taxi and hit the pavement dwellers while going towards Liberty Cinema from Kamal T-point.
Some of the passengers, who were inside the bus, managed to get down unhurt and left the spot after the accident, a senior police officer said.
It is being alleged that brakes of the offending vehicle failed leading to the incident, but police said a mechanical inspection of the cluster bus is being carried out to ascertain if it was a technical or human fault.
Soon after the accident, the driver of the offending vehicle managed to flee. Meanwhile, a huge crowd gathered at the spot and some of them vandalised the bus. DCP, Central, Shweta Chauhan said all those injured are undergoing treatment at hospitals.