MUZAFFARABAD: As many as four people lost their lives and another 24 were injured after an overloaded public transport vehicle fell into a ravine in the remote Haveli district of Azad Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday, police said.

Ansar Shabbir, a police official in the area, told Dawn over telephone that a jeep was coming to district headquarters Kahuta from Charoon village when it met the accident near Pathra More at about 8am, “due to the negligence of the driver”.

“The jeep was carrying 33 people, three times more than its actual seating capacity that was why it went out of the driver’s control while negotiating a curve and fell into a deep ravine,” he said.

He said four people lost their lives on the spot and were identified as Mohammad Asghar Rathore, 38, Chaudhry Mohammad Qasim, 45, Riaz Qureshi, 15, and Chaudhry Sharafat, 14.

The police official said another 24, including five women, were injured.

According to him, 13 of them had received critical injuries. The official said the driver managed to escape after the accident.

Published in Dawn, September 6th, 2018