Jammu, April 21 -- With trembling voice and horror still in his eyes, Rakesh Kumar, 29, narrates the ordeal of how a normal Monday morning turned into a lifetime of trauma. A pharmacist posted at Government Medical College, Jammu, Kumar had left his village--Nimbala--at around 8.30 am, boarding a bus from Ramnagar Market, unaware that it would soon plunge intochaos. "I was sitting next to the driver. The bus was overspeeding... it was too fast," he said, horror still visible in hiseyes. Then moments later, thebus swerved. "I saw the driver trying to hit the breaks, but nothing. Within no time, the bus was going down the slope. Death stared right in my face. I thought that is it..," The overloaded 42-seater bus carrying 63 passengers, including women and students, was on its way from Ramnagar to Udhampur when it plunged nearly 100 feet down a hillside, crushing an autorickshaw before landing upside down on the road below, in Jammu and Kashmir's Udhampur district on Monday. At least 21 people were killed and over 50 injured, said officials. "Amid shrieks and screams, I sat there looking. After the bus came to a standstill, I realised that the front windshield (mirror) had fallen on me. I removed it with my hands," he said, adding that the accident could have been avoided had the driver been driving responsibly. He recalled an army convoy moving on a lower roadcame to the rescue of the passengers. "They immediately started taking the victims out of the ill-fated bus that had become a mangled heap of iron," he said. God and blessings of my parents saved me today, said Rakesh. For 19-year-old Sushil Sharma, of Jallow village, the day had began just as routinely. Headed to government degree college at Udhampur, where he studied BA (honours), it was barely half km into the journey when the tragedy struck. "A tyre burst and the bus gets out of control. The driver was unable to control the bus," recalls Sushil from a hospital bed in Udhampur. "I was sitting on the rear side of the bus close to the door. There was total chaos.the bus toppled like a toy down the slope. It hit an auto-rickshaw on a lower road which turned turtle," he says. Luckily, Sushil survived with minor bruises and concussion. Rattan Chand, 50, who was travelling with his wife Savitiri Devi, son, and sister said that he was taking his wife to a doctor at Udhampur as she had to undergo a procedure for kidney stones. Instead, they were thrown into a nightmare. "We were sitting in the bus when there was a sudden sound, probably of a tyre burst... My wife Savitiri Devi and sister Kanto Devi are seriously injured and are being treated. I don't know what exactly happened but whatever happened was nothing short of a nightmare," he says. "Army personnel were the first to reach us, appearing like messiahs amid the chaos and confusion. They pulled us out of the wreckage. I had a miraculous escape," said Neetu Rani, 32, of Dehari village. Still shaken, she recalled the terrifying moments after the crash, saying there were cries for help all around as injured passengers lay trapped inside the mangled bus before rescuers arrived swiftly and began evacuating them. Rani said that she was visiting her mother's house in Udhampur, a visit that turned into a nightmare due to a "reckless driver"....