4 bodies found, 3 missing: MP bus mishap toll now 51

A day after an overcrowded bus skidded off the road and plunged into a canal in Madhya Pradesh’s Sidhi district, the toll in the accident rose to 51 with four more bodies being found on Wednesday. Three persons were still missing when rescue operations were called off on Wednesday evening. The driver of the bus has been detained.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan met many of the families who had lost their loved ones.

Many of those who died were headed to Satna to take the Auxiliary Midwife Nursery (ANM) exam.

The body of five-month-old Somya Singh was found floating on Wednesday morning in the adjoining district of Rewa. Sombai Singh (23), Somya’s mother, was scheduled to appear for the ANM exam, and had asked her cousin Asha to accompany her to Satna as her husband was in Hyderabad where he works as a driver. “She had completed her computer courses and was looking for a job to get stability for her family. But now we are waiting for her husband to return to carry out the cremation after Somya’s body was found,” said Sombai’s younger brother Ambika.

Like Sombai, Khusbhoo Singh Patel (23), the eldest of three sisters, had also boarded the bus with her cousin brother Anil Patel (24), hoping to crack the exams and secure a government job to aid her father, a small time farmer. Khushboo’s body was recovered on Wednesday, a day after Anil’s body was fetched from the canal. “She was good at studies and there was no one from the family who had managed a government job. This was their shot,” said Krishna Kumar Patel, a relative.