Two dead after bus overturns in Karol Bagh
Bus from Rajasthan overturned in Delhi, fire department got call around 1:08 am, rushed to spot quickly
Officials said they were informed about the accident at 1:08 am, after which multiple teams were rushed to the spot for rescue operations.
In the pale glow of Delhi’s pre-dawn streets, what began as a routine overnight journey from the pink city to the capital ended in chaos and heartbreak. The bus, which had departed Jaipur late Tuesday evening, carried men and women who had boarded with the ordinary hopes that fill such journeys—a job interview, a visit to a sick relative, a return to work after Holi celebrations with family. By 1:08 am, those plans had dissolved into the sound of twisting metal and shattered glass against the Karol Bagh flyover.
Nearby residents were jolted awake by the deafening crash. Among them was Ramesh Kumar, a paan seller who has run his small stall near Jhandewalan Temple for seventeen years. He was the first to reach the overturned vehicle.
“I was closing up when I heard it,” he said, his hands still trembling hours later as he recounted the scene. When I ran over, the bus was on its side, and people were screaming from inside. I could see arms reaching out through broken windows. I started pulling whoever I could. There was a young woman, she kept asking for her mother. I didn’t know what to tell her. I just kept pulling.”
Ramesh was soon joined by others from the neighborhood—chai wallahs who had been packing up their stalls, auto-rickshaw drivers waiting for late-night fares, residents who rushed down in their nightclothes. Together, they formed an impromptu rescue chain, passing the injured from the overturned bus into waiting arms, laying them gently on the cold pavement until ambulances could arrive.
By the time police and emergency teams arrived at 1:15 am, the neighborhood had already done what it could. Officials later confirmed that multiple teams worked through the night to extricate passengers trapped in the wreckage. The injured were rushed to Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, where doctors and nurses abandoned their overnight shifts to attend to the sudden influx of patients.
At Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, the emergency ward became a tableau of grief and urgency. A young man named Vikas sat on a plastic chair with a bandaged arm, his eyes fixed on a door behind which doctors were treating his older brother. They had been returning to Delhi after visiting their mother in Jaipur, who had been unwell.
“She wanted to send us back with pickles,” Vikas said, his voice catching. Now I have to call her and tell her one of us is in the hospital. I don’t know how to say any of this.”
Two passengers did not survive. Their bodies were taken to the mortuary, where families would later arrive to perform the painful task of identification. For those families, the phone call that came in the early morning hours delivered the kind of news that alters lives in an instant—the kind of call that no one answers at 2 am without dread already curling in the stomach.
Across the two hospitals, the injured bore the marks of the accident—broken bones, deep lacerations, the invisible wounds of shock. Among them was a young woman who had been traveling with her two-year-old daughter. The child had been thrown from her arms during the overturn but was found relatively unharmed, shielded by the seat in front. Hospital staff described the mother’s relief as overwhelming; she wept not from her own pain but from the discovery that her daughter was safe.
The bus, officials said, had been carrying around 25 passengers—fewer than its capacity, a small mercy in a tragedy that offered few. Early investigations suggested the driver may have lost control while navigating the flyover, though authorities said the exact cause would be determined after a full inquiry.
By dawn, the overturned bus had been righted and towed away, but the evidence of the accident remained: skid marks on the road, scattered belongings that had been missed in the chaos—a shoe, a child’s water bottle, a bag of snacks purchased at a highway dhaba hours earlier when the journey still felt ordinary.
Outside Jhandewalan Temple, which sees thousands of devotees each day, the morning rush of commuters slowed to stare at the spot where the bus had lain. Some paused to offer a brief prayer. Ramesh, the paan seller, reopened his stall as the sun rose, though his hands were not steady.
“I have seen accidents here before,” he said quietly, arranging his wares. will make my tea this morning and I will serve my customers, but I will also say a prayer for everyone who was on that bus. For the two who did not make it. For the families who are getting phone calls right now that they never wanted to receive.”
As Delhi woke to another busy Wednesday, the accident near Jhandewalan Temple became a reminder of how thin the line is between a routine journey and a sudden tragedy. For the survivors, healing will take time. For the families of the two who died, the journey home from Jaipur will forever be marked by what happened in the early hours, when a bus overturned in the darkness, and a neighborhood ran toward the sound of screaming to pull strangers to safety.