Nine passengers died aboard a sleeper bus that caught fire on the Yamuna Expressway in Greater Noida after the driver allegedly waved off repeated pleas to pull over, even as a burning smell filled the cabin, according to a passenger’s police complaint. The fire broke out around 11 p.m. on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, aboard a bus traveling from Delhi to Mahoba in Uttar Pradesh.
Passengers told the driver and conductor that something was burning and begged them to stop, according to the report lodged on a passenger’s complaint. The two men allegedly refused. “If you want to die, then die; we won’t stop the bus,” they told the passengers, the complaint says.
The bus, which carried a Bihar registration, was near Dayanatpur village in Jewar when the flames took hold. There were 35 people on board. Nine of them, including a woman, never got out. Photographs from the scene showed the charred remains of the sleeper coach. The driver also allegedly smoked bidis in the cabin as the smell spread.
What Police Say Started the Fire
Jewar Station House Officer Ajay Kumar Singh said: “A few passengers said that as the bus reached the Yamuna Expressway, they experienced a small burning-smell and asked the driver to stop.” By the time the driver finally halted the vehicle, Singh said, fire had broken out and swiftly engulfed it.
Greater Noida police said a spark or blast in the bus’ air conditioning unit set the engine’s lubricating oil alight, letting the fire race through the coach. The driver and the conductor fled the spot.
Prosecutions on U.S. Highways
Prosecutors have moved against bus drivers in several fatal crashes. A motor coach crash on Interstate 95 in Stafford County, Virginia, killed five people and injured more than 40 on May 30. Virginia State Police said the bus failed to slow as traffic backed up approaching a work zone on the southbound side at about 2:35 a.m., striking six vehicles.
The driver, Jing Sheng Dong, 48, a tour bus driver from Staten Island, New York, was initially charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter. Stafford Commonwealth District Attorney Eric Olsen said Dong was later indicted on three more felony counts along with a misdemeanor reckless driving charge. A conviction on each involuntary manslaughter count could bring as much as 10 years in prison.
Four members of one family from Greenfield, Massachusetts, were killed: Dmitri Doncev, 45, his wife, Ecaterina, 44, and their children, Emily, 13, and Mark, seven. Priscilla Mafalda, 25, of Worcester, Massachusetts, who was in a Chevrolet Suburban, also died. Forty-four others were treated for injuries. A GoFundMe campaign for the Doncev family’s funeral expenses passed its $50,000 goal.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is examining speed, fatigue and language proficiency as factors. The driver, a U.S. citizen from China, does not speak English, according to investigators, and one federal official told CBS News that Dong had declined to sit for an English proficiency exam. The coach belonged to E&P Travel, based in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, and it was carrying passengers from New York to North Carolina. Regulators have cited the company three times over two years for driving at least 15 mph above the speed limit, and a 2024 crash involving one of its buses near Greensboro, North Carolina, injured nine people.
A separate case ended in a plea. Bin Shao, 56, a tour bus driver from New York City, pleaded guilty on Monday, July 6, in Genesee County Court to five counts of criminally negligent homicide in the August 22, 2025, crash on Interstate 90 in Pembroke, New York. There were 54 people aboard for the trip from Niagara Falls to New York City; five died and dozens more were hurt. Shao told investigators a water bottle had rolled beneath the brake pedal, and that he lost control of the bus while reaching down to move it. At the time of the plea, his sentencing date was September 9, and he faces no less than 15 months and no more than four years in state prison.
A Split Verdict From a Tennessee Grand Jury
In Tennessee, a Carroll County grand jury indicted Sabrina Ducksworth, the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System bus driver involved in a crash on Highway 70 on March 27 that killed two Kenwood Middle School students. Court documents show Ducksworth faced three charges, including vehicular homicide. The grand jury returned indictments on two of the three counts — Failure to Exercise Due Care and Driving on Roadways Laned for Traffic — and did not indict her on vehicular homicide.
More than two dozen Kenwood students and staff members were aboard, headed to a Greenpower USA racing competition in Jackson. Investigators and witnesses said the bus drifted across the center line and hit a Tennessee Department of Transportation dump truck head-on, then struck an SUV behind it before ending up in a ditch. Family members identified the two students killed at the scene as Zoe Davis and Arianna Pearson.
District Attorney General J. Neil Thompson’s office is prosecuting the case. Judge Brent Bradberry is scheduled to hear Ducksworth’s first court appearance on September 25 at the Carroll County Circuit Court.