Buses kill 2 schoolgirls in city [ Tritiyo Matra News ]

Buses kill 2 schoolgirls in city

Local January 17, 2016

Within a span of several hours and in close proximity to each other, reckless driving in separate accidents claimed the lives of two schoolgirls in the capital on Saturday, triggering agitation by fellows, teachers and local people.
They alleged that road safety-related directives issued by the authorities and courts from time to time largely remained unheeded as the law enforcers, tasked with implementing them, lacked accountability.
On the fateful day, a Class IX student of Begum Rahima High School in the capital’s Segun Bagicha, Sabiha Akter Sonali, 14, was killed as a speeding minibus ran her over in front of Bangladesh Bar Council in the morning, eyewitnesses said.
The minibus, plying the Gabtali-Jatrabari route, knocked down Sabiha around 8:30am when she was crossing the road on her way to school, leaving her dead on the spot.
Sabiha’s father Zakir Hossain said his daughter went out with her mother to get admitted to Tejgaon Government Girls High School.
‘My daughter wanted to be a doctor and treat the poor as I am a poor man. But she is now dead. Reckless driving claimed my daughter’s life,’ he was wailing.
Enraged by the death, fellow students and teachers of Begum Rahima High School, guardians and locals blocked the road at Matsya Bhaban intersection.
The protesters chanted slogans, demanding punishment of the responsible bus driver.
Momotaz Jahan, head teacher of Begum Rahima High School, said the culture of impunity was behind such reckless driving that caused frequent accidents in the country.
She said Sabiha was brilliant not only in his academic study but also in other extracurricular activities.
During the protest, traffic came to a halt for around two hours during the rush hour.
As police recovered the body and tried to take it to Dhaka Medical College Hospital for a post-mortem examination, the agitated schoolchildren barred them sitting in front of the body.
Later, traffic returned to normalcy after police assured them of justice in the accident.
Officer-in-charge of Shahbagh police station Abu Bakar Siddique said the law enforcers seized the bus but its driver and his assistant managed to flee the scene.
The body was sent to Dhaka Medical College Hospital morgue for an autopsy.
In another incident, Khadiza Akhter, 10, who completed Class V examinations from Lakshman Government Primary School in Comilla, was crushed under the wheels of another bus in front of Shishu Park, about 200 metres away from the Bar Council where Sabiha was killed, around 3:30pm.
Khadiza came to Dhaka to visit her elder sister who took her to Shishu Park, said Ayesha Khatun, the sister.
Shahbagh police sub-inspector Mahfuzur Rahman said a bus running on Gabtali-Gulistan route crushed the girl when she was crossing the road in front of Shishu Park.
She was taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital where doctors declared her dead.
Shahbagh police OC said the bus driver was arrested and the bus seized.
In 2015, at least 8,642 people were killed in road accidents in the country, according to Jatri Kalyan Samity, an organisation working on protecting passenger rights.
In the recent years, the authorities issued directives against reckless and unlawful driving, use of extra bumpers in vehicles, loud horns, fake driving licenses, and unfit, banned and unregistered vehicles on roads and highways that lead to accidents, traffic congestion and pollution but they were hardly implemented, according to the experts.
The High Court on August 3 last year asked the government and the police to keep unfit motor vehicles off the roads across the country and seize several lakh ‘fake driving licences’ and take action against fake licence users.