On the night of October 23, 2025, after holidaying in Hyderabad, Nelakurthy Ramesh, 30, boarded a bus bound for Bengaluru with his wife and two children. Sharing the journey was Ramesh’s extended family — his cousin, cousin’s wife, and their two children. All of them settled into the berths of the sleeper bus, operated by V-Kaveri Travels, a private “luxury bus service” as per its website.

The bus had started its journey from Kukatpally, a suburb in north-western Hyderabad, around 9.40 p.m. The two families boarded the bus at L.B. Stadium, which is about 9 kilometres from Kukatpally. There were 44 passengers and two drivers in the bus, according to the travel agency’s ticket list. Some of the passengers fell asleep in the air-conditioned bus, while others remained glued to their phones, their faces illuminated by the blue glow of screens.

Ramesh recalls what happened hours later. “There was a thud that shook me out of sleep,” he says. “I thought a tyre was punctured and the driver would stop, but he continued to drive.” He checked his phone. It was 3 a.m.

A few seconds later, he noticed thick smoke emanating from the driver’s cabin. “Someone from the back shouted, ‘Fire! Fire!’ We saw flames in the front of the bus,” says Ramesh.

The bus halted in the middle of the road. Ramesh peered into the darkness and saw a median on the right side and bushes on the left. He felt a sense of foreboding. He bolted to the front door to open it, but shrank back as the blaze became bigger.

“I thought all of us were going to die and wanted to escape somehow,” he says.

Ramesh picked up a blunt object and started hitting a window on his left side. Three blows later, the glass pane shattered. Ramesh pushed his two children out and then his wife.

As he did this, he screamed about the fire outbreak to alert his cousin on the