CHEVELLA: A single scream shattered the quiet, then silence fell, broken only by muffled cries beneath rubble. The bus had been flattened under a mountain of gravel, its passengers trapped—some buried up to their necks—waiting nearly an hour before rescuers could reach them.
“It felt like the world had collapsed on us. We couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe,” recalled R. Venkataiah, 55, a head constable from Vikarabad. On a work trip at the time, he now lay in a hospital bed, his voice still shaky. “We screamed for help, but no one could get to us for so long.”
By the time emergency crews managed to extract survivors, many had suffered serious injuries—deep cuts, crushed limbs, and spinal damage. Among the worst affected were women, children, and students.
“It happened so fast,” said C. Sri Sai, a 27-year-old government school teacher from Chevella. Lying in her hospital bed with her leg wrapped in bandages, she recalled boarding the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation bus at around 5 a.m. “I sat in the last row. About an hour later, there was a massive crash. The bus jolted violently, people screamed, and then everything went dark and dusty.”
Her family rushed to the scene from Tandur after hearing the news. “It took nearly 30 minutes before the rescuers managed to pull us out,” she said.
A truck had collided head-on with the bus, tearing open its right side and spilling gravel into the wreckage. Those sitting in the seats behind the driver had no chance of escaping. “They were buried instantly under the gravel,” said Abdul Razak, 38, another survivor. His hands trembled as he spoke. “I could only hear muffled cries. It was terrifying.”
Mohammed Yunus, a businessman from Tandur, was also aboard the bus. He escaped with minor bruises, but the memories would haunt him. “I was standing in the middle of the bus when the lorry hit. I fell sideways, and then the gravel started pouring in. I thought I was going to die,” he said. “Because I wasn’t seated, I managed to wriggle out through a broken window. Others weren’t so lucky. They were stuck, gasping for air under the weight of the stones.”
“We were buried up to our necks,” said another survivor. “It was impossible to move. All we could hear were people groaning in pain.”
When rescue teams—locals, police, and emergency workers—finally dug through the rubble, the sun had already risen high in the sky. What they found inside the wrecked bus was a scene of unimaginable devastation, one that no words could fully capture.
