Mangled remains of a private bus after it fell into deep gorge, near Kullu, on Thursday. (PTI photo)

MANALI: At least 44 people have died and 29 sustained injured on Thursday when a bus fell into a gorge in Himachal's Kullu district. Kullu superintendent of police (SP) Shalini Agnihotri said several women and kids were among the injured.

The vehicle had started its journey from the Banjar bus stand around 4pm and covered barely 2km when it met with an accident . The driver apparently lost control while negotiating a sharp turn at the Bhiyoth Mor, which has a gradient of more than 75 degrees. Eyewitnesses said the bus veered off the road to scrape the mountain face before hurtling down the gorge.

Local residents and police personnel faced difficulty locating and extricating the bodies from the mangled mass of metal. Parts of the vehicle were strewn over a wide swathe of the bottom of the gorge.

Between 2009 and 2018, Himachal Pradesh recorded 30,993 road accidents in which 11,561 people were killed and 53,909 injured. This year alone, as many as 430 people died in 1,168 road accidents in the state till May 31.



In Video: Several killed as bus falls into gorge in Himachal Pradesh's Kullu