Thirteen children were injured when a train struck a bus carrying schoolchildren, parents and teachers at an ungated railway crossing at Koggala in the Galle district on Sunday afternoon. The bus driver and his assistant have both been arrested and appear in court on Monday. The bus crossed the line while the warning signals were active.
The collision happened near the Martin Wickramasinghe Folk Museum, the Daily Mirror reported, when a train running from Beliatta to Maradana hit the back of the bus on the crossing. Its first account put the injured at ten, “including students”, taken to Karapitiya Teaching Hospital and other hospitals nearby; an evening update raised the figure to 12 children.
The bus was returning from an educational trip arranged for pupils attending a tuition class in Kottawa, on the southern outskirts of Colombo. Hiru News, whose first filing described it simply as a bus that had come on an excursion, reported the same event from Galle.
Sixty-one people were on board
Police have since given a full breakdown of who was in the bus when it was hit: 41 children, 14 tuition-class teachers and six parents — 61 people in all, Hiru reported at 3.47 p.m. That is a considerably fuller bus than the “more than 50 passengers” first reported, and the ratio is unusual: one adult for every two children.
The train was the 12.50 p.m. express from Beliatta to Maradana, according to the same filing. The injured were admitted to Unawatuna hospital and the Galle national hospital; the Daily Mirror’s earlier account named Karapitiya Teaching Hospital, the principal tertiary hospital serving Galle, “and other hospitals nearby”.
The crossing had no gates
Police told the Daily Mirror that the crossing where the collision occurred is not fitted with safety gates and depends instead on warning lights and a bell to signal an approaching train.
That detail places the crash in a pattern this desk has reported repeatedly this year. In August a 17-year-old girl was killed and two of her siblings injured at an ungated crossing in Kilinochchi, and a three-wheeler driver was killed at the Aluthgama crossing, after which residents blocked the coastal line in protest. An eight-year-old girl died at the Walpola crossing the same month.
Habaraduwa Police have arrested both the bus driver and the conductor, and investigations are continuing. Hiru’s headline on its second filing records only the driver’s arrest; the arrest of the conductor appears in the body of the same report.
A count that moved through the afternoon
The casualty figure rose through the afternoon and evening, and the sequence of filings shows it. Hiru’s first report, stamped 3.07 p.m. Colombo time, put six children in hospital. Its follow-up at 3.47 p.m. raised the number to ten and added the arrest. The Daily Mirror’s first account was filed at 3.16 p.m.
At 6.40 p.m. the Daily Mirror filed again, putting the number of injured children at 12 on police information — the fourth published count of the day, and the last of Sunday’s. NewsFirst raised it to 13 on Monday morning:
| Filing | Time (Colombo) | Injured |
|---|---|---|
| Hiru, first report | 3.07 p.m. | 6 children |
| Daily Mirror, first report | 3.16 p.m. | 10 people, “including students” |
| Hiru, follow-up | 3.47 p.m. | 10 children |
| Daily Mirror, update | 6.40 p.m. | 12 children |
| NewsFirst, Monday | 8.18 a.m. (26th) | 13 children, aged 14–15 |
The later filing also sharpens the cause. Police told the paper that preliminary reports indicate the bus crossed the railway crossing without heeding the railway signal lights — the first account of how the bus came to be on the line as the train approached. It gives the collision time as around 12.50 p.m., and confirms the arrest of the driver and his assistant.
Ada Derana moved three separate times on the story — first reporting six injured, then eight, then ten — but the site has returned a CloudFront 403 to this desk for 41 consecutive days, so no publication date could be extracted from any of the three and they are named here rather than cited.
Update, Monday: the bus goes for examination, the crew go to court — and the count rises again
NewsFirst, which had not filed on Sunday, reported at 8.18 a.m. on Monday and advanced the story on four points.
The casualty figure has moved again, to 13. NewsFirst states that thirteen children aged 14 and 15 were injured — one more than the Daily Mirror’s Sunday-evening figure of 12, and the first filing to give the children’s ages. That makes five published counts in under 24 hours: six, ten, ten, twelve, thirteen. The ages place them in the mid-secondary range, consistent with the tuition-class excursion the bus was returning from.
The bus is to be examined. It will be inspected by a Motor Vehicle Examiner on Monday, and may be referred to the Government Analyst if necessary. That is the standard route for establishing the mechanical condition of a vehicle after a serious collision, and it means the roadworthiness question is now formally open.
The crew appear in court. The 40-year-old driver and the 21-year-old assistant, both arrested on Sunday, are scheduled to be produced before court on Monday. Their ages had not previously been reported.
The signals were working. NewsFirst states plainly that the bus had crossed the railway line despite the warning signals being activated. This answers a question this article had explicitly left open. The Daily Mirror’s Sunday account said police believed the bus had crossed “without heeding the railway signal lights” — an account of the driver’s conduct that did not establish whether the equipment itself was functioning. NewsFirst’s filing asserts that the signals were active at the time, which shifts the issue from the crossing’s equipment to the decision to cross.
NewsFirst also confirms the destination of the excursion independently: the students were returning from a visit to the Martin Wickramasinghe Folk Museum at Koggala, the landmark beside the crossing.
Update, Monday: the bus was running without a tour permit, and its licence has been cancelled
The bus had no tour permit. It was carrying schoolchildren on an excursion without the permit that journey required, Hiru reported at 12.03 p.m. on Monday. That is the first reported finding of a regulatory breach in the case, and it is separate from the question of how the bus came to be on the crossing.
Its passenger transport licence has been cancelled with immediate effect. The Western Province Road Passenger Transport Authority took the step on Monday. The provincial detail is worth noting: the crash happened in the Galle district, in the Southern Province, but the bus was licensed in the Western Province and it is that authority which holds the power to revoke.
The same filing confirms the casualty figure this report carries — 13 injured, including students — and repeats the core facts: the 12.50 p.m. Beliatta–Maradana express, the crossing at the entrance to the Martin Wickramasinghe Memorial Museum at Koggala on the Galle–Habaraduwa road, and the injured admitted to Unawatuna hospital and the Galle national hospital.
Separately, NewsFirst reported on Monday morning that the bus was to undergo a technical examination during the day. No result of that inspection had been published at the time of this update.
The licence cancellation answers one of the questions left open below — what regulatory action would follow — but it raises another the filings do not address: how a bus without a tour permit came to be hired for a school excursion, and whether anyone has been held responsible for arranging it.
Update, Monday afternoon: criminal charges, a drug test, and children shouting at the driver
Police are pursuing criminal charges against the bus driver, Deputy Inspector General of Traffic Control and Road Safety W.P.J. Senadheera told a media briefing on Monday, the Daily Mirror reported at 2.36 p.m. The driver is also being subjected to a drug test as part of the investigation.
The children saw it coming. The DIG said that students shouted at the driver to stop and that he continued driving, after which the train struck the rear section of the bus. This is the first account from any filing of what happened inside the bus in the seconds before the impact, and it goes directly to the question this article had left open — whether the crew registered the signals. On the DIG’s account the warning was not only mechanical: it was also being shouted at the driver by his passengers.
The equipment question is confirmed at police level. DIG Senadheera stated that the warning lights and bells at the crossing had been operating when the driver attempted to cross. NewsFirst had reported this on Monday morning; it is now attributed to a named senior officer at a briefing.
The hospital position. Of the 13 injured students admitted to Karapitiya Teaching Hospital, one has been discharged and eight remain under medical care; the rest have received the necessary treatment. The DIG put the collision at about 2.15 p.m. on Sunday, the first precise time any filing has given for the impact.
DIG Senadheera said the incident could have produced a major tragedy comparable to the fatal train accident at Yangalmodara, and noted that no deaths resulted at Habaraduwa.
One figure does not reconcile. The Daily Mirror’s account describes 63 students, parents and teachers travelling from a private educational institution in Kottawa. The police breakdown published by Hiru on Sunday gave 41 children, 14 tuition-class teachers and six parents — 61 people. The two differ by two, and neither filing addresses the gap. This report continues to carry the itemised figure of 61, because it is the only one published as a breakdown rather than a total.
Not reported
This section has been updated three times. The two outlets had appeared to differ on who the casualties were: Hiru and Ada Derana described children injured, while the Daily Mirror’s first account said ten people, “including students”, with parents and teachers also on board. That question is now settled. The Daily Mirror’s evening update states plainly that the number of injured children has risen to 12, matching Hiru’s framing. No filing reports an adult among the injured, and none reports any death.
The equipment question is now answered twice over. This section previously recorded that no filing established whether the warning lights and bell were actually working — the Sunday accounts described only the driver’s conduct. NewsFirst’s Monday filing states that the signals were activated when the bus crossed, and DIG Senadheera confirmed the same at Monday’s police briefing. The follow-on question this section then raised — whether the bus crew registered the signals — is partly answered by the DIG’s account that passengers were shouting at the driver to stop. What no filing establishes is why he did not.
The count is now at 13 and has not settled. Sunday’s four filings ran six, ten, ten, twelve; NewsFirst makes it thirteen on Monday morning. No outlet has yet published a figure described as final, and no filing reconciles the 12 against the 13 or says whether the extra case was a later presentation at hospital.
The hospital question is answered; the charge is not. Monday’s police briefing establishes that one of the 13 has been discharged and eight remain under care at Karapitiya. It also establishes that criminal charges are being pursued against the driver — but it does not name the offence, and it says nothing about the assistant, who was arrested alongside him on Sunday. Whether the assistant still faces action is now unclear rather than merely unreported.
Still unreported: whether the train was damaged or delayed, and whether any of its passengers or crew were hurt; the result of the driver’s drug test; the outcome of Monday’s court appearance and of the vehicle examination, both of which fall after these filings; and whether the children’s injuries are serious. No filing says who arranged or authorised the excursion, or whether the tuition institution faces any action.
The Department of Meteorology had warned of heavy rain across much of the island on Sunday; no filing attributes the collision to the weather.
