- By Kamakshi Bishnoi
- Sat, 16 May 2026 06:39 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
In a devastating fire, a passenger bus parked outside a hotel on the Agra-Mumbai National Highway in Madhya Pradesh’s Tarana area in Ujjain, caught fire late Friday night. Most passengers had stepped inside the hotel at the time of the incident, while a few remained on the bus and managed to get down when the fire broke out.
However, a four-year-old boy could not be rescued and was burned alive. After the fire was brought under control, a search operation revealed his body under a seat.
The air-conditioned Intercity Express (MP-07 ZL 9090) was on a trip to Gwalior from Indore when it halted at a highway hotel in the Maksi region for tea and snacks. When the fire burst in the rear of the bus, the people on board immediately got out of the bus.
The boy, Anay, the 4-year-old son of CA Abhishek Jain, was on a journey from Indore to Shivpuri along with his parents and was burnt in the blaze. The remains of the child were later recovered by the police after the fire was controlled and a search operation was carried out in the bus.
The passengers on the bus have said that a stench of burnt wiring was observed by passengers some time before the fire, which they told the driver and operator to look into, but it went unnoticed,d and the fire broke out just after the halt of the bus and burnt the entire bus in less than a minute due to plastic luggage and items inside.
The fire brigade from Maksi, Shajapur and Tarana reached the site after a long time, and it took several hours to control the fire, which burnt the entire bus to ashes. The bus had to be cut open with cutters and bulldozers before rescue teams could find their way in and reach the boy.
Grieving father Abhishek Jain had accused the bus operator and administration of the murder of his child. "This bus, the bus owner, and the administration have all murdered my child. The fire brigade didn't arrive for an hour. These people have murdered my child, and I won't let them go," Jain said.
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He also accused the operator of having no emergency exit or fire extinguisher in the bus. Police officials said the driver and conductor of the bus had fled from the spot once the fire broke out, and that a large part of the people onboard, as well as the locals, helped break the glass of the windows to rescue passengers and break the buses.
Police preliminary investigation suggests a short circuit as a possible cause of the fire, while negligence on the part of the driver or operator is also being looked into. The bus had around 50 passengers on board.