Six die as Hyderabad-Eluru electric bus hits a loaded truck on NH-65

Six passengers were killed and at least 12 others injured when a private electric seater bus rammed a container truck on the Hyderabad-Vijayawada highway in Telangana's Suryapet district early on 26 August.

The bus, operated by Fresh Bus, had left Hyderabad around 12.25 a.m. with 42 passengers bound for Eluru in Andhra Pradesh via Vijayawada. The crash occurred between about 4.45 a.m. and 5.15 a.m., depending on the police account, near Komarabanda or Dorakunta in Kodad mandal on National Highway 65.

What broke through the coach

Munagala police said the truck was travelling in the same direction and was carrying aluminium electric poles. Officers said the bus was moving fast and that the driver was trying to overtake when the coach hit the rear of the container. The poles came through the front of the bus and crushed the driver's side of the cabin and the first rows.

Other briefings described iron rods rather than aluminium poles and said the truck may already have struck a road divider before the bus hit it. Suryapet Superintendent of Police K. Narasimha said six people were dead and that two or three of the injured were in critical condition. Five of the dead were women in one official count. Identities had not been released by late morning.

Local residents and passing drivers helped pull people out of the mangled front. The injured were taken first to the government hospital in Kodad. Two were later moved to a hospital in Vijayawada. The wreck blocked NH-65 and backed up traffic on the main Hyderabad-Vijayawada run for hours.

The political line and the open facts

Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy issued condolences to the families. Overspeeding is the working police theory. A full reconstruction will have to settle three points that the first briefings do not agree on: the exact time, the cargo on the truck, and whether the container was already disabled on the carriageway.

Those details matter because this was an electric intercity coach on a night schedule, not a local diesel bus. Night seater services on NH-65 have grown as operators put newer battery coaches on the Hyderabad-Andhra routes. A rear-end crash into a loaded container at highway speed is an old accident type. The new element is the vehicle: a heavy EV coach, a driver who may have been awake since the midnight departure, and a cargo that turned into spears when the bumper failed.

What the investigation has to show

Narasimha said further investigation is on. The file will need the bus speed from any telematics Fresh Bus carries, the truck driver's statement on why the container was stopped or slow, and a medical report on the bus driver if he survived. Early accounts said the poles crushed the driver's side. If the driver is among the dead, the telematics and the dash camera, if any, become the main witnesses.

For a highway that carries the Hyderabad-Vijayawada load every night, the durable question is not only fault in this one collision. It is whether intercity EV coaches on NH-65 have the same night-time speed discipline, rest rules and underride protection that the cargo they share the road with already fail to meet.