CTB Nilame Malli who rescued lives of others by self-sacrifice, preventing bus falling into precipice!

CTB Nilame Malli who rescued lives of others by self-sacrifice, preventing bus falling into precipice!

A rare incident of a driver who sacrificed his own life by making the bus collide with a rock with the motive of saving the lives of a number of people in order to avoid a risky spot of the Haputale mountain as the brakes of the CTB bus concerned were not functioning was reported day

before yesterday.

Though a large number of lives of passengers in this bus was saved, the driver, a depot employee and a police officer who travelled as a passenger had to sacrifice their lives in this accident. On sensing that the brakes of the bus which was travelling along Beragala Road, in Uduvihara area, Haputale were not functioning, he had been shouting out and  kept on driving in the midst of this risk. In that instance the depot officer and a police officer too have approached the driver and had started giving him advice of how to escape this precarious situation.

As the bus which was being drives at a rapid speed had been drawn towards a precipice on the left side of the road and the only alternative to avoid that situation was to knock the vehicle against a boulder on the right side of the road, the driver had understood. Of course the driver had been aware that though the bus could be made to stop if it was made to strike it with much force, he would have to face an accident since he was on the right-side of the vehicle. But this driver who thought that what was important was to save several lives, he had manouvred the vehicle immediately to the right.

The bus had finally come to a halt with that same rapid speed after striking the bend there with some rocks. In the process the driver breathed his last on the spot. The depot officer and the police officer too have died later. Though passengers in the said bus were injured, the lives of a large number of passengers were saved in the process. The driver who thus gave his life in this fatal journey was Kirthi Bandara Padmasiri alias Nilame Malli attached to the CTB depot of Bandarawela.

23 wounded persons who faced injury were admitted to Bandarawela and Haputale Hospitals. If the bus instead of being diverted towards the right side was travelling on the left-hand side, it would have fallen into a deep precipice and so many lives would have been lost, the police later said. This effort which this driver launched with his own life at stake was already highly hailed in the social media.