india

Updated: May 24, 2020 00:42 IST

A group of college students in Chennai, who were participating in bus day celebrations, fell off the roof of a city bus when the driver applied brakes in order to avoid hitting a two-wheeler on Monday.

Following the revelry, the police arrested 17 students, all of whom belonged to the Pachaiyappa College. They were booked on charges of unlawful assembly and causing public nuisance.

The video of the incident, in which the students sitting on top of the bus hurtled down like a pack of cards all of a sudden, has gone viral on social media and on the internet.

A couple of them landed on top of a two-wheeler. Though, the students fell in front of the bus, they escaped without injuries.

Some could be seen holding up the board of the bus route, others were merrily sitting with their feet banging on the windscreen. The incident took place on a bus running between suburban Avadi and the Anna Square on the Marina seafront.

The city police said nine of those arrested were past students of the college. “We have registered an FIR and their parents were called to the police station. Both the students and their parents were advised and an undertaking on not indulging in such activities was received from all those arrested. Later, they were let out on bail,” a police official said.

Bus day celebrations had their origin in the early 1970s as a gesture of thanksgiving to the bus crew. But, now they have turned into a show of machismo, leading to violent clashes among students of sister colleges as well as within a college. Faced with frequent clashes in which students fight with sickles, this was proscribed when J Jayalalithaa was the chief minister of Tamil Nadu to keep campus violence under check.