33 injured as sleeper bus overturns on Srinagar-Jammu highway
Jammu: At least 33 passengers were injured as a West Bengal-registered sleeper bus travelling from Srinagar to Jammu overturned on the national highway in J&K’s Ramban district on Thursday, officials said.
The West Bengal-registered sleeper bus overturned inside a tunnel near Maroog on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway (NH 44).
The injured passengers were shifted to District Hospital Ramban with the assistance of police, State Disaster Response Force, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Army personnel and Civil Quick Response Team volunteers.
Nine of the injured were referred to Government Medical College (GMC) Hospital in Jammu city for further treatment.
Traffic officials said the West Bengal-registered sleeper bus had 55 passengers on board when the accident occurred.
Following the accident, a single carriageway has been opened in the affected tunnel to facilitate movement of traffic, officials said. Senior officials are present at the spot and supervising the rescue and traffic management operations.
Accidents on the Srinagar-Jammu National Highway are primarily caused by a combination of treacherous geography, ongoing infrastructure modifications, and human error. This high-risk mountain highway serves as the vital lifeline connecting Kashmir to the rest of the country, but its unique vulnerabilities make it highly prone to recurring, fatal crashes.
According to reports from the J&K Traffic Police Department and traffic experts, the primary causes of accidents on this highway include treacherous terrain and natural hazards.
A major portion of the highway cuts through highly unstable, rocky mountains. The stretch from Ramban to Banihal is notably hazardous.
Frequent landslides, shooting stones, and patches of sinking roadbed make the corridor highly volatile and unpredictable.
Heavy rainfall and flash floods cause mudslides and water accumulation, leaving the tarmac slick and hazardous.
Traffic experts frequently point to sub-optimal road design and engineering flaws on dangerous curves and drops. Ongoing road-widening projects have intentionally cut into slopes, destabilising parts of the mountainside, and creating blind spots, detours, and sudden bottlenecks.