GUWAHATI, India — Families of each person killed in the Kaziranga crash will receive Rs 9 lakh, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said Saturday, according to the Press Trust of India. The amount includes Rs 2 lakh announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Sarma announced the payment after visiting the accident site on National Highway-715 at Rangajan, near Kaziranga National Park. Twenty-six people died there Friday in a head-on collision between a minibus and a container truck, and 20 others were injured.
Many of the victims were college students returning from their classes, a police officer said. Two of the dead were women.
The crash happened near the Hathikuli Tea Estate in the Kohora range. The minibus was traveling from Golaghat to Nagaon, police said, while the container truck was heading toward Upper Assam.
“The death toll is rising very fast. As per the latest information, doctors have confirmed that 26 people have died in the accident. The identities of the dead are being ascertained now,” an executive magistrate of Golaghat district told reporters. The toll could rise further, he added.
Visit to the site
In a post on X on Saturday, Sarma said he had visited the site and called what happened there heartbreaking. He said he would personally visit the home of every bereaved family within the next two to three days.
Additional doctors from Guwahati and other hospitals have been sent in, Sarma wrote, so postmortems are completed quickly and the injured get the best possible care. A detailed investigation is underway, he added.
A day earlier, in a social media post reported by PTI, Sarma said he was deeply distressed by the accident.
“The scale of this loss has shaken all of us, and my heart goes out to every family that has lost a loved one. No words can ease their pain, but I want them to know that they are not alone. All of Assam stands with them in this hour of grief,”
Getting the injured the best care possible, without delay, was the foremost priority, Sarma said then. Assam Panchayat and Rural Development Minister Atul Bora, the local MLA, was at the site overseeing relief arrangements, he added.
Speed and the road near the park
In his Saturday post, Sarma wrote that some traffic decisions were allowed to go easy at the Nalbari Cabinet meeting due to political pressure. The relaxations should never have happened, he wrote, and they will not be considered again. Strict traffic rules will be restored and enforced firmly.
A senior official said the minibus had been driven at very high speed, in breach of the restrictions in force near the park.
“The bus was running at very high speed, violating restrictions imposed near the park. We think that the accident took place when the driver of the minibus lost control, and the vehicle collided with the container truck,” the official said.
The Golaghat district administration said a thorough investigation will be conducted into how the accident happened and whether either vehicle violated traffic rules, in terms of overcrowding beyond its seating capacity and speeding near the park. The exact number of people traveling in the bus was not immediately known, Golaghat Senior Superintendent of Police Swapnaneel Deka told PTI.
Rescue and treatment
Nine ambulances ferried the injured, an official said, and doctors referred 20 people to Jorhat for advanced treatment. The injured were first taken to Kohora Model Hospital, and most of the critically injured were referred to civil hospitals in Bokakhat and Golaghat and to Jorhat Medical College and Hospital.
Bora reached the site soon after the crash and supervised the relief and rescue work. Senior civil and police officials also rushed there, Deka said.
Postmortems would be done through the night at Swahid Kushal Konwar Civil Hospital in Golaghat. Additional District Commissioner Jintu Borah said special lights had been arranged for the work.