Preliminary investigations have revealed the private passenger bus accident near the Manampitiya Kotaleeya Bridge on Sunday night where 11 passengers were killed was due to driving at excessive speed with a broken spring leaf.
It is said that the driver had driven at high speed with the broken spring leaf and had lost control of the bus near the Kotaleeya bridge and it had gone off the road and had fallen into the stream.
Meanwhile, the bus driver was arrested by the Police in connection with the bus accident that took place in Polonnaruwa, Manampitiya Kotaleeya Bridge at around 7.45 p.m. on July 9 killing 11 people and injuring 41.
The Manampitiya Police said they will produce the arrested bus driver before the Polonnaruwa Magistrate’s Court today.
The OIC of Manampitiya Police Inspector Asela Sarath Kumara, who is conducting the investigation, stated that 10 men and a woman, including two students of the Eastern University, died when the bus that was travelling from Kaduruwela to Kalmunai met with the accident. Police said that the driver of the arrested bus is a 40-year-old resident of Sandiveli, Batticaloa. According to Police, investigations have confirmed that this private bus does not have a road licence to drive on the North Central Province roads.
The Manampitiya Police stated the cause of this fatal accident was due to careless and reckless driving.
According to Manampitiya Police, an 18-year-old youth residing at No.130 Boraweva, Welikanda, also died in this fatal accident. The young man, who was employed in the private sector in Colombo, was attending his grandmother’s funeral with his parents and boarded the Kalmunai bus which starts from Kaduruwela town.
The police said that the rest of the deceased were residents of Kalmunai and Akkaraipattu. The bodies of the deceased are kept at the Polonnaruwa General Hospital for postmortem.
After the bus accident, Manampitiya Police, Army, Special Task Force and Navy together with local residents worked together for about three hours to rescue about 41 injured people stuck in the bus and admitted them to Manampitiya and Polonnaruwa hospitals in private vehicles and ambulances.
The police who are conducting the investigation said it has not been possible to confirm the details of some of the people who died in the bus accident, and the reason for this is that their national identity cards and mobile phones, as well as their luggage, fell into the Manampitiya Kotaleeya Oya.
Manampitiya Police Station OIC Inspector Asela Sarath Kumara told us that the Army, Police officers and local residents who launched the operation have picked up some of the luggage and mobile phones of the injured patients being treated at the Polonnaruwa General Hospital and handed them over to the Police.
In order to find out if more passengers are stuck under the bus that fell into the Kotaleeya Oya, the commando force, the swimming units of the Maduruoya and Welikanda Army bases, as well as the Security Forces, had started a special operation on the 10th. On the instructions of Polonnaruwa SSP Nishan De Silva and ASP in charge of Welikanda area Sudath Asmadala, a special Police team including Manampitiya Police OIC Inspector Asela Sarath Kumara is conducting further investigations into the accident.