The thirst for speed claimed the lives of a mother and her daughter on a Dhaka street yesterday.
Taking the opportunity of relatively light traffic after the Eid holidays, a speeding bus crushed Jahura Begum, 35 and Asma Akhter, 10, a class-III student of Angel Academy in Jagannathpur, against the central reservation of Progati Sarani at Baridhara yesterday evening.
Eyewitnesses told The Daily Star at the spot that the two were about to cross over to the other side of the road through an opening in the central reservation.
The bus rammed them against the central reservation and dragged them for 70 to 80 feet while violently scraping them against the central reservation. As the mother and daughter were lodged between the bus and the central reservation, the driver stopped, backed up and then ran them over with its right front and rear wheels.
Bloodstains ran for almost 20 feet on the central reservation. Police later covered it with sand.
Witnesses said the bus sped away but people caught it over 1 km away from the spot at Progati Sarani-Airport Road intersection when it had to stop at the traffic lights.
Furious locals stopped seven busses of the same bus service company and ransacked three. They later calmed down when they heard the news that the bus was captured along with its driver.
Jahura’s husband Abu Bakar Siddique, a scrap material trader, told The Daily Star his wife took their daughter for a stroll in Baridhara Park. He said his daughter wanted to go out in her new Eid clothes and since her mother was unable to take her out during Eid holidays she took her to the park yesterday.
He said they fateful accident happened on their way back home.
The family resided in Naya Nagar of Badda.
Gulshan Police Station chief Kamal Uddin said they seized the bus and arrested driver Mojnu, 21.
Assistant Sub-Inspector Golam Rabbani of the police station told The Daily Star that around 5:55pm the bus was speeding and the driver saw the mother and daughter on the road but did not slam on the brakes and failed to avoid them.
The bus rammed them against the central reservation before running them over. They died on the spot.
Almost three quarters of people killed in road accidents in Dhaka city are pedestrians while mostly minibuses are involved in these accidents.
According to Accident Monitoring Cell of Bangladesh Road Transport Authority and Dhaka Metropolitan Police, 377 people died in 620 accidents in Dhaka metropolitan area in 2008. Of them, 283 were pedestrians. Another 79 walkers were seriously injured.
In 2007, the total number of accidents in the city was 696 that caused deaths to 451 people. Among them 336 were pedestrians. At least 108 persons were also seriously injured.
