Balakrishna, driver of a Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC) luxury bus that caught fire on Thursday night, says that the first thing he thought of as soon as he noticed smoke was the safety of the 11 passengers aboard the bus.
“First, I smelled something burning. Then, I saw smoke. As soon as I saw it, the safety of passengers was the first thing on my mind and I told everyone to get down,” the TSRTC driver who has been serving as a bus driver since March 2012, said.
It was a quirk of fate. Before beginning the journey to Guntur in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh from the Mahatma Gandhi Bus Station, Mr Balakrishna had washed the windshield of his Rajdhani bus. Around 11.15 p.m., he stopped at Brindavan Hotel near the Outer Ring Road, and given the long journey to Guntur, he wanted to clean the stains left on the windshield by droplets of water that were not wiped off. That is when he caught a whiff of an acrid odour.
