BEST driver had no electric bus experience, finds probe

MUMBAI: Sanjay More, 54, the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) driver who was behind the wheel of the bus that rammed into 22 vehicles, claiming seven lives and leaving 42 injured in Kurla West on Monday night, had received just three-day training before transitioning from driving a manual geared bus to a longer and automatic electric bus (e-bus), people familiar with the probe said on Tuesday.

- Shashank Rao and Vinay Dalvi

More, booked for culpable homicide not amounting to murder over the accident, started driving the 12-metre-long Olectra-make e-bus—the longest in the BEST fleet—from December 1, before which he had driven a six-metre-long manual bus for four years, the people added.

Putting More behind the wheel of an e-bus within a limited time since driving a manual bus was in defiance of the transport utility's internal SOP, a BEST official told HT. Bus drivers need to go through six weeks of refresher training before they are allowed to scale up. "However, this is just on paper. While new drivers get trained for 15 days before being given large and small BEST buses to drive, refresher courses go on for three days only, which More undertook," the official said.

This was corroborated by Kurla police, investigating the case, whose primary investigation revealed that More "had only driven manual, geared diesel vehicles till December 1".