By Sunanda Parmeshwar, IANS
Mumbai : At least four kindergarten students were killed and seven seriously injured here Monday when a van transporting them home caught fire near their school. But a cooking gas cylinder powering it miraculously failed to burst.
A blaze quickly enveloped the van outside the Millat School in Jogeshwari, a northwestern suburb of Mumbai, around 1 p.m., quickly charring in and killing Madiya Hindani, 7, Zubair Kuradia, 4, Hatika Sheikh, around 6, and a fourth child who was charred beyond recognition.
Three of them died on the spot while a fourth lost his life at the R.N. Cooper Hospital.
A girl child, Rukaiya, was in critical condition with 90 percent burns, doctors said, while six other children were battling burn injuries ranging from 20 to 50 percent, police and their families said.
The other injured kids were identified as Zuber, Shakeel Rahman, Talha, Sumaya, Zoyba and Mudassar.
Ironically, the driver of the van, Rafiq Quereshi, escaped without a scratch on his body. The police have detained him for questioning.
Deputy Commissioner of Police Vinay Choube told IANS that contrary to earlier reports, the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinder fitted in the van did not go off despite the fire.
“Why the tank is in tact is something we are investigating,” he said. The police could not explain what exactly caused the fire.
“It is a very tragic incident,” a distraught Deputy Superintendent of Police Archana Tyagi said. “We have repeatedly asked parents not to send their children in vehicles known to be dangerous.”
The parents of the dead and injured children who rushed to the hospital were inconsolable.
Shakina, the mother of Mudassar, wept and complained that neither the school nor the hospital bothered to inform the families about the tragedy.
“We came to know about the incident from TV news channels,” she told reporters.”Only this morning I fed my boy dal and rice. Now his eyes are burnt and heavily bandaged. How will he survive? I don’t know if he will be able to see at all.”
The massive fire brought employees of a nearby fuel station running to the burning van. They helped to put out the fire and rush the injured and the dying kid to hospital for emergency medical attention.
The fire was quickly controlled and prevented from spreading to the petrol station. In no time the accident brought hundreds of men and women to the spot, clogging traffic.
The distressed parents accused the doctors of not taking adequate care of the children. Some even got into scuffles with reporters, one of who was beaten up. A television cameraman had his equipment broken.
Eventually, officials transferred the injured children to three other better-equipped hospitals in the city.
Police said the driver had just switched on the ignition of the small van packed with 11 children when the fire erupted, quickly enveloping the vehicle.
But Shakina insisted that she had nothing against the driver.
“Quereshi is a well-known person, he may not be at fault. He has been driving it for 15 years,” she said.
One other relative yelled outside the Cooper hospital, to no one in particular: “This hospital should go to hell! They are not providing us proper service. They are asking us to buy medicines. They should provide the basic medicines.”
Another police officer, Dattaray Sankhe, told IANS that the van driver had claimed that he had the permits to run it with a LPG cylinder. “We will get more details from the owner.”