Gerard de Souza
Gerard@herald-goa.com
KHED, (Maharashtra): The accident in the midst of an unfamiliar terrain could not have been a worse nightmare for the relatives and friends of passengers of the fateful bus as they received vague and unconfirmed news of what exactly happened, and had to immediately make arrangements to rush to the spot, not knowing the exact fate of their loved ones.
The situation was bad even for the Khed police, for whom identifying the dead, collating them with an unclear and incomplete passenger list led to total chaos in the initial hours.
“We had to use the mobiles that were in the possession of the deceased as well as any identification documents that we could find. We were then sticking the names across the bodies. Later when relatives came, we asked them to identify the bodies. The whole procedure took hours,” a police constable, who did not wish to disclose his identity, said.
The police were aided by passers by and locals who helped in retrieving the bodies.
Khed DySP Dipali Kale said that their priority was to get the bodies identified and all passengers accounted for.
“Our priority was in dealing with relatives. A full probe into the matter will begin Wednesday,” Kale told Herald.
The statement only indicated how much the energy of the local police went in helping out relatives who knew little of the language and didn’t know how to go about the formalities.
Most relatives had to, once the body was identified, arrange for a hearse, to carry the body back to Goa, for which again they had to rely on the logistics of the Maharashtra police.
The Goa police too dispatched a team led by PI Tushar Lotlikar as well as a team from the Regional Transport Office (RTO) which was helping to liaison between the anxious relatives and the Khed Police.
