Pala: A phone that vanished inside a moving KSRTC bus led to a midnight rescue operation at the Pala depot, where mechanics dismantled a section of the vehicle to recover the trapped device.

The unusual `rescue mission' unfolded around 1.30 am on Monday when a KSRTC bus from Kozhikode reached the Pala depot. The phone belonged to one of a group of 10 medical students travelling from Kozhikode to Muvattupuzha. It had accidentally slipped into a gap in the damaged portion of the bus body during the journey.

The bus had begun its trip from Kozhikode at 4.30 pm, and the student realised the phone was missing when the vehicle reached Kunnamkulam. However, when calls were made to the phone after the bus reached Thrissur, the phone started vibrating, confirming it was still inside the vehicle. By the time the bus reached Muvattupuzha, the other students had got down, while the phone owner continued the journey in the hope of tracing the missing device.

When the bus reached the Pala depot around 1.30 am, the mechanical team there stepped in to recover the phone. After removing a portion of the bus body's outer panel, the mechanics managed to retrieve the device. Conductor Vikas Chandran and driver C T Sukumaran said the operation took around 30 minutes.

The tricky `rescue operation' was carried out by a team comprising Suresh Kumar, Shobin and Anil, under the guidance of depot mechanical section head Sudheer.