A day after a bus owned by Diwakar Travels fell into a canal in Andhra's Krishna district, killing 11 people and injuring over 30, the YSRCP has alleged political influence in the investigation.
The incident occurred in the early hours of Tuesday when the bus fell off the bridge near Mulapadu as it was heading to Hyderabad from Bhubaneswar. The driver was killed on the spot.
Speaking to TNM, YSRCP leader and former minister Kolusu Parthasarathy said that there was political interference, as Diwakar Travels is owned by TDP MP JC Diwakar Reddy, with his brother TDP MLA JC Prabhakar Reddy also having a share in the business.
"It seems that the TDP government is bent on trying to hush up the main cause behind the accident," Parthasarathy said.
"There are only two reasons due to which this could have occurred. One was that the driver was either drunk, or sleepy, or even suffered a heart attack or something. The other reason could be that the bus was faulty," he added.
Following the accident, many of the injured were shifted to a government-run hospital at Nandigama near Vijayawada.
On Tuesday, YSRCP chief Jaganmohan Reddy, along with senior leaders including Parthasarathy visited the hospital. Jagan alleged that a fictitious report was prepared without conducting an autopsy on the body of the driver of the bus.
Elaborating on the allegations, Parthasarathy said, "It takes around half an hour generally for a post-mortem to be conducted, but the authorities finished the post-mortem of over 10 bodies in just two hours. Why were they in such a hurry to do it?"
"Even if you see what happened at the accident spot, the accident happened in the morning, and by 11.30am or so, the bus was removed from the culvert and put to the side of the road. Usually, experts or officials from the RTA should investigate if there were any lapses on the vehicle's part, but the bus just disappeared by evening," he added.
On Tuesday, tempers ran high at the hospital as Jagan, who is the Leader of Opposition, snatched papers from a doctor, and Collector A Babu who had reached there took objection to this.
Jagan then pulled up the Collector and remarked that everybody from the police to the Collector was involved in corruption. He even threatened to send him to jail after a thorough probe into the accident.
Jagan said Diwakar Travels and Kesineni Travels are owned by TDP MPs and were being run in violation of all rules.
The YSRCP are now demanding a detailed investigation into the accident.
Meanwhile, the police stated that a case had been registered against the bus driver, and the result of the post-mortem was awaited.
"If there is any fault with the vehicle, only then will we book the travel agency," a police official from the Penuganchiprolu police station told TNM.
A separate FIR was also lodged against Jagan with the Nandigama police for allegedly misbehaving with a government official and preventing him from discharging his duties.