In shock, kids look for friends who died

ETAH: Nine-year-old Anuj might recover from his head injury, but it will take several years for him to get over the pain of losing his "best friend" Lavish Kumar, who was sitting right next to him when their
school bus hit an oncoming truck at full speed, taking the lives of 12 innocent children.
Still crying with both trauma and sorrow, Anuj said as he lay on a hospital bed, "Lavish was on the seat next to mine.We always sat together. We were feeling cold and everybody was sitting as close to each other as possible. Suddenly I felt as if the bus was thrown into the sky. In a blink of an eye I lost my friend. He was in a pool of blood. Everybody was weeping. We were so scared."
Like Anuj, Priyanshu, 8, and Priyag, 6, two brothers in UKG and LKG, are in deep trauma. All that they seemed to care about was their friends.
But if Anuj, Priyanshu and Priyag lost friends, Jyoti and Alok, students of grade I and II who survived the tragedy, lost their youngest brother. He was only 8. The two, who were being treated at a hospital in Saifai and were still unconscious, have no idea what happened to their little one. Their mother Manju said, “My world has come crashing down. In the morning, all three were so happy to leave for school. One of them is not there now." She wailed, "Police must arrest the school authorities responsible for disobeying the DM's order when he had so clearly asked schools to be shut because of the cold and fog."
Two children killed in the accident were not even in the bus when it all happened. Radha (16) and Shalini Chauhan (14) were crushed between the school bus and the sand-laden truck as they headed for class on their two cycles. Their distraught mother Anita Chauhan said, “Authorities must explain why these heavy vehicles are allowed to run on high speed in rural areas, especially during school hours. Why are there no cycle tracks in the area, even after the UP government says it has spent several crores to develop cycle tracks?”