“Anti-social elements active after the accident might have escaped with her belongings,” a police officer said.
A villager, on the other hand, took three children whose parents were missing to the Pukhrayan health centre for medical aide. He left the children at the hospital and returned to the accident site to help in rescue effort.
A little after he left, a group of villagers turned up at the health centre. They said they knew the family and wanted to take the children with them. Hospital staff spoke to the children but they could not identify the villagers, who fled after police were alerted.
“The children are 10, 5 and 2 years old. I have instructed the staff that they be sent home only after proper identification of family members,” director-general of health Sunil Kumar Srivastava said.
As hospitals in Pukhrayan and nearby towns were overwhelmed, several non-government organisations, guest houses and dharamshlas in the area had taken in the injured, he said. Doctors visited them and shifted the seriously injured to the Kanpur medical college and other government facilities.
Srivastava said a cold storage owner had offered to store unidentified bodies for three days. “We will preserve the DNA sample of the dead passengers whose relatives do not turn up,” he said.
Several doctors, with private practice, lent a hand to doctors in government hospitals. Some even opened the doors of their nursing homes and arranged blood donors for those in need of surgery, a health official said.
