'Broke window

Several of the dead were in two sleeper buses that caught fire after the fireball erupted from the gas leak; many people still unaccounted for

- Senjuti Sengupta

JAIPUR: When Shilpa Sharma awoke by the smell of gas at 5.30am on Friday and stepped out of her house, she thought she had stepped into a ghost town. Thick black smoke had enveloped her neighbourhood, two kilometers from where an LPG tanker collision would soon create a massive fireball on the Jaipur-Ajmer highway, killing at least 12 people and leaving dozens with severe burns.

"Our house is just 2km away from the site of the accident. It was around 5.30am that I was woken up by the smell of some gas and then I heard an explosion. Before I could even see what it was, a kid from my neighbourhood called me asking for help," Sharma recalled.

The explosion she heard would transform an ordinary morning commute into a tragedy for dozens of families. Among them were her neighbours' children, Dev, 21, and Riddhi, 15, whose parents were among the 32 people critically injured in the disaster.