NEW DELHI: A DTC bus driver and the conductor of another stared death in the face, but turned the tables on the group of men who attacked them, all the while shouting their support for Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim , saving the lives of over 150 passengers in Jyoti Nagar in north-east Delhi.“Four men, all of them wearing black helmets, came in front of my bus,” narrated Ramesh Kumar, who was driving the familiar red DTC bus. “I slowed down, thinking the men wanted to cross the road. But in seconds, more than 40 people, all in black helmets, appeared out of nowhere and started breaking the windows and doors of the bus.”He remembered with a shudder that they first broke the window next to his seat and threw petrol at him. “Even then, my only thought was to get the 70 or so commuters out of the bus safely,” said Kumar. “I ripped off my petrol-soaked shirt and threw it before opening the door at the back to let everyone out,” continued Kumar. “But some attackers entered the bus and pushed everyone back to their seats. I could see my life ending, but dared to fight them off and free the passengers.” Once everyone was off the bus, the helmeted men set the bus on fire.Meanwhile, Anil Kumar, the conductor of a green DTC bus that was behind Kumar’s vehicle, saw what was happening and asked the driver to halt immediately. “The passengers of the red bus ran towards our bus, but I opened the door of our bus and urgently asked the 70-80 passengers to disembark,” Anil Kumar told TOI.When the attackers saw what was happening, they ran toward the green bus and started pelting stones at the driver, conductor and passengers. They then set the bus ablaze, but Anil Kumar had by then assisted everyone off the bus. “I was the last one to leave the vehicle,” he said.All the shops in the area, including quite a few petrol pumps, were shut down immediately after the buses were burnt down and police personnel were deployed there in huge numbers.People thwarted attacks elsewhere in the city too. In west Delhi’s Khyala, Ashok was passing by when he saw two men, their faces obscured by helmets, throwing petrol on a bus. “I raised an alarm and gathered a crowd. After we caught the duo, we informed police and handed the two men, Shyam Lal of Bihar and Shatrughan of Haryana, to them,” Ashok told TOI.In Badarpur in south-east Delhi, the local people similarly caught Amit Kumar trying to set fire to a bus and handed him to the cops.