Dubai: The lawyers of the Omani bus driver, who rammed the vehicle into a height barrier in Dubai that killed 17 people including 12 Indians, have told a UAE court that the restriction bar violated the GCC safety guidelines.
Twelve Indians were among the 17 people killed in the horrific bus accident on June 7 when the bus, coming from Oman, wrongly entered a road not designated for buses and crashed into a height barrier that cut the left side of the bus and killed passengers sitting on that side.
The other deceased include two Pakistanis, one Omani and one Filipina.
Mohammad Al Tamimi, one of the two lawyers representing the driver, told the Dubai Traffic Court that the distance between the warning signboard and the height barrier was only 12 metres, the Gulf News reported Tuesday.
The mistake is in the place of the height barrier according to the pictures in the accident scene. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) guideline for positioning advance warning signs states that if the road's speed limit is 60km/h, then the distance between the signboard or height restriction chain and the height barrier should be 60 metres, not 12 metres in our case, Al Tamimi told the court.
According to Traffic Prosecution, the speed limit on that road is 40 km/h.
The Dubai Police blamed the 53-year-old Omani driver, who was moderately injured, for the accident, saying "at times a small mistake or negligence can lead to adverse consequences".
It was too short a distance to stop the vehicle. It is not the defendant's mistake and not his negligence. Putting the height barrier in a wrong place caused the accident, Al Tamimi said.
Al Tamimi claimed there is no proof that the defendant was driving the bus at 94kph when the crash happened.
He asked the court to assign a specialised engineer from the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) to inspect the crash site and make a report of the positioning of warning signboards and the height barrier, the report said.
Meanwhile, the second defence lawyer Mohammed Al Sabri accused the RTA of eight mistakes found by a report prepared by the company that owns the bus.
He submitted a copy of the report to the court and requested the appointment of an expert to examine the accident location and check if the mistakes were committed by the RTA.
The reason behind the accident was the solid height barrier and its positioning. The sun at the time of the accident [5pm] blurred the signboards to the driver. The confession of the driver is not enough to convict him, Al Sabri told the judge.
Last week, prosecutor Salah Bu Farousha Al Felasi, director of Traffic Prosecution, said the driver couldn't follow the signboards as the sun shade had obstructed his view.
He admitted to lowering the sun shade and didn't notice the signboards or warning signs, despite having used the road several times before the accident, said Al Felasi.
His reckless driving, not paying attention to the road and his speeding, caused the disaster, he added.
The verdict in the case is expected on July 11, while the defendant will remain under police custody.
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New Delhi(PTI): Trinamool Congress MP Saket Gokhale on Monday said 1.26 crore voters have been "deleted" from Bihar's electoral rolls following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise and challenged the government to a debate on the issue in Parliament.
Sharing the Election Commission's SIR data in a post on X, Gokhale said the poll panel "conveniently" did not share any information regarding its claim of having found foreign nationals in Bihar.
As the month-long first phase of the SIR has concluded, the EC on Sunday said that enumeration forms from 7.24 crore or 91.69 per cent of voters of the state have been received.
It also said 36 lakh people were found to have either permanently shifted from their previous addresses or were not found. It pointed out that seven lakh Bihar voters were found to have enrolled themselves at multiple places.
"ECI has deleted 1.26 crore voters in Bihar from the 2024 Lok Sabha voter list overnight," Gokhale, the TMC Rajya Sabha MP, said on X.
Calling the details revealed by the EC "bizarre", Gokhale pointed out that of a total of 7.90 crore voters, forms have been collected from only 91.69 per cent -- 7.24 crore voters.
"This means that forms were not collected from 65 lakh voters, and they will be deleted. About 22 lakh voters (2.83 per cent) have been deleted because they're claimed to be deceased, about 36 lakh voters (4.59 per cent) have been deleted because they're claimed to be untraceable, and about 7 lakh voters (0.89 per cent) claimed to be found as duplicate entries so half i.e. 3.5 lakh entries deleted," he said.
"ECI has conveniently not disclosed how many voters were found to be non-citizens of India. This is important because ECI had claimed that the SIR was being done to 'remove illegal immigrants'," Gokhale said.
EC sources had earlier said their field-level functionaries found "a large number of people" from Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar during house-to-house visits made for the ongoing intensive review of the voters' list in Bihar.
Gokhale further said the names "deleted" were on the voters' list in the last Lok Sabha polls.
"A total of 1.26 crore voters in Bihar, whose names were on the Lok Sabha 2024 voter list just one year ago, have been deleted from the new voter list," he said.
"To give you a comparable idea, the number of deleted voters in Bihar during the current SIR is equal to the entire combined population of Uttarakhand plus Himachal Pradesh or the entire combined population of all 6 states of the North-East (excluding Assam)," he said.
He said EC needed to answer some questions "urgently".
"The voter list was revised by ECI before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. How on earth did 1.26 crore voters become ineligible in just one year?" he said.
"How many voters has the ECI been unable to reach for collecting their forms? Under the rules of SIR, those whose forms were not collected will be deleted. Therefore, what is the total number of voters whose names have been deleted only because their forms were not collected?" he questioned.
He said the EC has not collected documents along with the forms from all 7.24 crore voters.
"Does this mean that more voters will be deleted if their documents have not been collected with their forms?"
He reiterated West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's statement that the SIR exercise "is NRC by the back door".
"ECI had claimed 'removing foreigners from the voter list' as one of the reasons for conducting this SIR. Why has the ECI not disclosed how many actual 'foreigners' were found and deleted from the voter list during this SIR?" he said.
"It makes zero sense that 12 million people in Bihar have become 'ineligible' voters in just one year between the 2024 Lok Sabha elections till date... When 12 million people in a single state lose the right to vote overnight, it is a serious issue," he said.
He added that the opposition MPs have been pressing for a debate on the issue.
"Why is the Modi Govt so scared to have an open discussion on this in Parliament?" he added.
Meanwhile, the EC has asserted that no names will be deleted from draft rolls without following due process.
VERY IMPORTANT AND SHOCKING
— Saket Gokhale MP (@SaketGokhale) July 28, 2025
ECI has deleted 1.26 CRORE voters in Bihar from the 2024 Lok Sabha voter list OVERNIGHT
Last night, the ECI published details of ongoing "special intensive revision" of the electoral roll being conducted in Bihar. The deadline for collection of forms… pic.twitter.com/E7x2egYfCw