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Student becomes unlikely guardian amidst bus crash chaos
By Suranga Rajanayaka – Gampola
In the terrifying bus tragedy at Ramboda, another story of a woman's love for children emerged - despite her several injuries, 20-year-old uni student Nishani Rathnayake, herself injured and dangling by one arm from the wreckage, noticed something that would change the next hour of her life: a six-month-old infant, completely alone in the chaos.
The second-year Wayamba University student, travelling back to campus after visiting her Badulla home, suddenly became an accidental guardian when the night bus plunged down the Kotmale hillside.
"The bus rolled twice before coming to rest," Nishani recalls. "When I could finally move, I saw this baby with no parent in sight."
Though her right arm hung uselessly and she was in pain, the agricultural management student did something extraordinary. She cradled the crying infant in her left arm, using her own body as a shield against the cold night air. For 45 minutes, this young woman—who had never held this child before—became its sole protector.
"My arm was going numb, but I kept thinking—what if this were my little sister?" Nishani told us from her hospital bed, where she is being treated for a dislocated shoulder. The baby she comforted that night remains at Peradeniya’s Sirimavo Bandaranaike Children’s Hospital, its parents’ whereabouts still unknown.
The child’s rescue became possible only because of Nishani’s stubborn refusal to let go, even when rescuers initially assumed the baby was hers.
"Everyone thought I was the mother," she said.
As authorities continue searching for the infant’s family, one truth has emerged from this tragedy: Motherhood isn’t about relation; it’s about protection, as this student proved.
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