Dubai:

A Dubai court on Thursday reduced the seven-year sentence of an Omani bus driver who crashed the vehicle into a low-clearance sign after entering a restricted lane, killing 17 people, including 12 Indians, in 2019.

The Dubai Court of Appeal reduced the sentence of the 55-year-old driver to one year in jail and also withdrew his deportation order, the Gulf News reported.

The driver still have to pay a USD 13,612 fine and some USSD 925,660 in blood money to the families of the victims.

The driver had received a seven-year sentence from the Dubai Traffic Court in July 2019. The court had also ordered to deport the driver. His licence was suspended for one year.

The tour bus packed with Eid vacationers was heading from Oman’s capital Muscat to Dubai in June 2019 when the driver wrongly entered a road not designated for buses and rammed into a metal barrier, killing 17 people, including 12 Indians, two Pakistanis, an Irish, Omani and Filipina. Several others were also injured.

Among the 31 people on the bus were also citizens of Bangladesh, Germany and the Philippines.

The 54-year-old driver had accepted responsibility for the crash, saying he was momentarily blinded by the sun’s glare. He later appealed the verdict, arguing that the steel barrier was wrongly placed, according to local media reports.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)