2 killed, 3 injured in bus mishap at Kumrek

GANGTOK, 05 July: The driver and an as yet unidentified passenger are feared killed in a road mishap reported late this evening from Kumrek on the Rangpo-Rorathang road. An SNT bus hired by Golden Cross pharma company to ferry its employees from the factory at Rorathang to Rangpo met with an accident at Kumrek at around 8 p.m. this evening, veering off the road and plunging into the Rangpo-Sawney khola below. 
SP [East], Dr. MS Tuli, confirmed that the driver, Raj Kumar Sunwar, and one more as yet unidentified passenger have been killed in the accident, while three more persons have been injured, one of them grievously.
The casualty list could have been much higher had the bus been occupied with its usual number of passengers. Propitiously, none of the Golden Cross employees were on board the vehicle at the time, the security personnel at the unit having turned away the bus without passengers when the driver was suspected of being in a dangerously inebriated state, sources inform. Those on board in the bus could have been acquaintances or passengers picked up along the route as the bus returned to Rangpo. The identities of those injured in the mishap had not been established till the time of going to print.
While all three injured persons were rescued with the help of rafters who had come in from 10th Mile, West Bengal, to assist the local residents and authorities in the rescue efforts, the dead bodies of two killed in the mishap have not been recovered yet with any further recovery efforts being too dangerous to undertake so late in the night. The injured were rushed to the Rangpo PHC where they were under treatment at the time of going to print.