Minor girl crushed to death by bus in Punjab

Ferozepur: A 10-year-old girl was today crushed to death by a private bus near Makhu on Amritsar-Zira highway triggering a protest by locals, police said.

The girl was standing along the road side when the bus, belonging to New Deep Transport Co on its way to Amritsar from Bhatinda, hit her after which in a bid to save herself from a tractor-trolley, she tried to run across the road but was crushed under the bus, they said.

The victim, identified as Gurpreet Kaur, a resident of Dyalpura Village in Tarn Taran district, was killed on the spot, police said.

The accused bus driver fled from the spot following the accident, they said.

The girl along with her family members was going towards Nakodar in a tractor-trolley to pay obeisance at a religious place, police said.

Following the accident, hundreds of locals led by Congress leader and former Minister Inderjit Singh Zira gathered on the spot and raised slogans against the bus company.

The vehicular movement on the Amritsar-Zira highway got disrupted due to the protest for some time.

Later, the police pacified the agitators and booked the bus driver under section 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the IPC, police said.

The body was handed over to the family after the postmortem, police added.