As many as 30 people died after a bus carrying 31 passengers, employees of an agriculture university at Dapoli, fell into a ravine in the mountainous region of Raigad district in Maharashtra on Saturday.

All the 30 bodies were recovered from the accident site on Sunday at Ambenali Ghat near Poladpur town in Raigad district.

On Saturday it was reported that 34 passengers were on the bus, but now it has been confirmed that only 31 people had boarded the bus.

The NDRF team has now called off the operation after recovering all the bodies.

“The search operation by the NDRF and local trekkers is over. The total number of deaths in the accident is 30. There were 31 passengers in the bus, of which one jumped out and survived,” Raigad district collector Vijay Suryavanshi said.

All the passengers were staffers of Konkan Agriculture University in Ratnagiri and were on their way to the popular tourist destinations of Mahabaleshwar and Panchgani on the Mumbai-Goa highway for a weekend picnic.

According to police, the bus fell 500 feet down into the valley near Poladpur in the treacherous Ambenali Ghat section around 9 am on Saturday.

Prakash Sawant-Desai, one of the bus occupants, escaped the tragedy with minor injuries. He managed to climb to safety and alerted his university about the accident around 10.30 am. He is the sole survivor of the accident.

The university informed the police about the accident.

While local villagers and others started a search and rescue operation soon, poor connectivity in the remote hills and heavy rains along the Konkan coast made the efforts difficult. A National Disaster Relief Fund (NDRF) team from Pune was called shortly. Local trekkers were deployed to assist in the rescue mission.

Later, Sawant-Desai told reporters that the bus reportedly lost control near Poladpur after skidding on wet mud.

“I managed to climb up and called up Dr. Balasaaheb Sawant, Konkan Agriculture University authorities and the police,” said Sawant-Desai, an assistant director at the university.

He said he had to climb over 500 feet as there was no mobile phone range in the valley. “On reaching the road at the top, I came into the mobile range and called up the police and university officials,” said Sawant-Desai.

(With agency inputs)