DHADING: A person died and 54 others sustained injuries after a bus they were travelling on met with an accident near Dhadingbesi, district headquarters of Dhading district, on Tuesday.

Dhading District Police Office (DPO) identified the deceased as Hom Bahadur Ghale of Gangajamuna Rural Municipality-3 in the district.

The bus (Ba 3 Kha 478) heading to Dhadingbesi from Gumdi of Gangajamuna Rural Municipality skidded off the road at a turning point and plunged onto a paddy field killing a passenger and injuring others in Kumal village of Nilakantha Municipality-12 this afternoon, according to the DPO.

Of the seven critically injured referred to the National Trauma Centre in Kathmandu, Ghale breathed his last on the way, said police.

As many as 31 of the 54 injured passengers are receiving treatment at the District Hospital while rest of them were rushed to health institutions including the National Trauma Centre in Kathmandu, police said.

The bus driver accelerated the ill-fated bus to reach the destination on time for maintenance after it was partially repaired in the middle of the journey, one of the injured passenger shared.

The preliminary investigation points to over crowded passengers in the bus plying the rural road in high speed as the causes of the accident, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Ram Bahadur KC at the DPO said.

The incident site being just five minutes away from the district headquarters, locals, security personnel and Red Cross team reached the site and rescued the injured in time, informed DSP KC.

The bus was carrying quake victims and villagers thronging to district headquarters to receive their second installment of relief package and shopping for upcoming Tihar festival.

The Dhading District Hospital administration faced hard time arranging the inflow of injured passengers.

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