Medical tests on the driver involved in the fatal Kurla BEST bus accident have shown he was neither drunk nor suffering from any mental illness at the time of the crash, police said Wednesday.
The electric bus, leased by the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking, struck a crowd in the Kurla area on December 9, killing eight people and injuring more than 40 others. Several vehicles were also damaged.
The driver, Sanjay More, 54, is in police custody facing charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder for alleged reckless driving. He had earlier claimed that brake failure caused the accident, but a report from the regional transport office (RTO) found that the bus was in good working condition with no technical issues.
A psychological test conducted at a civic hospital in Sion confirmed that More had no mental disorder, and blood tests revealed he was not under the influence of alcohol.
The BEST administration has stated that More received three days of training before being allowed to drive the electric bus.
RTO officials suspect that human error and inadequate training for handling automatic transmission buses could have contributed to the incident, one of the most deadly in recent memory involving BEST buses.