Passengers' scream rent air after three buses crash in ECR pile-up

CHENNAI: Ganesan V grimaced as he gingerly slipped his hand through the sleeve of his blood-splattered shirt.
"Take me to the mortuary," he said quietly as two hospital attendants helped him onto a stretcher. For almost two hours, the 63-year-old's family were at a loss on how to tell him that his wife was dead. But Ganesan knew the minute he turned and saw Lakshmi's lifeless body mangled in metal and broken glass, with a foot sheared away.
The couple was returning to Chennai on Sunday after attending the Mahamaham festival in Kumbakonam. The bus they were travelling smashed into another bus on a bridge over the backwaters of Muttukadu on East Coast Road.
Ganesan, sitting behind the driver with his wife, recounted the moments before the bus ploughed into the oncoming vehicle. "We were moving fast. We saw the bus ahead but thought the driver would pull out of the way," Ganesan said.
What followed was a squeal of tyres, the screech of wheels and a loud crash of the collision. The screams of passengers filled the air. Moments later, a third bus hit the strick en vehicles.
Ganesan's wife died in the accident that also left 47 people injured. "I knew she was dead when I saw her body," he said.
In the casualty ward at Government Royapettah Hospital people in pain shrieked as families shuttled from one room to another, leaving bloody footprints on the floor.
Vijayakanth A is among those who rushed to the hospital after he received a call that his sister Anitha was among the injured. "When I entered the ward, I heard her cry before I saw her," said Vijayakanth, breaking down. Anitha, 23, who works in a pharmacy in Saidapet, lay on a stretcher. She was returning to Chennai after visiting her parents in Chidambaram.
Rescue teams admitted 36 of the injured to Government Royapettah Hospital, nine to Government General Hospital and two others to a private hospital.
GRH resident medical officer (RMO) Dr Anand Pratap said most patients had fractures and lacerations.
"Four required admission, while the rest were treated as outpatients or referred to Government General Hospital (GH)," he said.
Doctors said the condition of two of the bus drivers, who were admitted to Government General Hospital, was stable. "We will monitor them for a day or two," GH RMO Dr Sheela Rani said, adding that two women admitted to the hospital were seriously injured.
Doctors discharged those with minor injuries but many of the patients remained in a state of shock.
"Everything happened so fast. I keep replaying it in my mind," said Venkatesh D, who was in the bus heading to Puducherry, trying to blink beneath the gauze wrapped around his head.