RAJANPUR, Pakistan — At least 11 people were killed and 39 injured early on Wednesday when a passenger bus travelling from Karachi to Dera Ghazi Khan struck a road divider and overturned on an under-construction section of the Indus Highway in Punjab’s Rajanpur district, according to Rescue 1122.
“Eight passengers died on the spot while three others succumbed to their injuries in hospital,” a spokesperson for Rescue 1122 said, in the latest official account, published by Business Recorder on Thursday. The crash happened near the Sitara Pump fuel station in the Bangla Hidayat area of the district. Citing eyewitnesses, the spokesperson said overspeeding was suspected, and that construction work was underway on that stretch of the highway.
A toll that kept rising
The casualty figures moved repeatedly through Wednesday, and no final, reconciled official toll had been issued by Thursday. The first reports, including the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) wire, put the toll at eight dead and 32 injured. Rescue-sourced accounts later on Wednesday raised the deaths to 10 — eight at the scene and two in hospital — and the Urdu daily Juraat published a named list of the 10 dead: seven men, two women and a girl. They included a father and his four-year-old daughter from Taunsa Sharif and a 75-year-old woman from Dera Ghazi Khan.
Business Recorder’s Thursday report of an 11th death — a third passenger dying in hospital — is the latest figure available. Injury totals varied widely across reports, from 30 to 44; the latest account says 39 people were injured, 13 of them in a precarious condition. Because several of the injured remain critical, officials have not ruled out the toll changing again.
Rescue operation and hospital response
Rescue 1122 teams and police shifted the dead and injured to the District Headquarters (DHQ) Hospital in Rajanpur, where an emergency was declared. Nineteen injured passengers were taken to hospitals and 12 others were treated at the scene, according to Business Recorder; DHQ doctors said six of the injured were in critical condition and four had been referred to Rahim Yar Khan.
Deputy Commissioner Rajanpur Imran Hussain Ranjha, Assistant Commissioner Rojhan Muhammad Ashraf Saleh and Rescue 1122’s district in-charge, Dr. Muhammad Aslam, reached the scene and supervised the operation, according to rescue-sourced reports. Trapped passengers were cut out of the wreckage, and the overturned bus blocked the highway for hours before heavy machinery cleared the road and traffic was restored. Urdu-language media reports identified the coach as an Adil Shah bus; the operator has not commented publicly in the reports reviewed by Zark News.
What police have — and have not — established
Police have registered a case and launched an investigation, APP reported, and the bus has been impounded. An initial police assessment, reported by Pakhtun Digital, suggested overspeeding and driver fatigue, noting the bus had travelled a long distance from Karachi without a stop. The Rescue 1122 spokesperson separately said overspeeding was suspected, citing eyewitnesses.
Those are preliminary views, not findings. No official inquiry has published a conclusion on the cause of the crash, no authority has formally assigned fault to the driver or the operator, and officials have not publicly stated the driver’s condition or status. Zark News is not attributing responsibility for the crash while the investigation is open.
Official reaction
Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif expressed grief over the deaths, directed the deputy commissioner to supervise rescue and relief at the site, ordered an emergency at DHQ Rajanpur and nearby hospitals with the best possible treatment for the injured, and directed immediate action against those found responsible, according to a statement from the provincial government’s public relations directorate. No compensation package for victims’ families and no formal inquiry committee had been announced as of Thursday.
A highway stretch with a history
The crash adds to a grim record on the Rajanpur–Dera Ghazi Khan sections of the Indus Highway, a major north–south artery carrying heavy intercity bus and freight traffic. In December 2022, two passenger buses collided near Shah Wali, in the same district, killing eight people and injuring more than 25; dense fog and overspeeding were cited at the time. Wednesday’s crash happened on a section where construction work was underway — a configuration that features in the official accounts of the scene, though no source has formally blamed the road works.
What happens next turns on the police investigation and on the condition of the critically injured. Zark News will update this story when an official, reconciled toll or a finding on the cause is issued.
Sources: Business Recorder; Associated Press of Pakistan; Juraat; Pakhtun Digital; DGPR Punjab statement as reported Oct. 21–22, 2026.
