Crushed train carriages were cleared and tangled tracks straightened again, as workers worked on Sunday to quickly restore a vital railway line in eastern India two days later. when the country worst railway disaster in decades.
Families of the victims are still struggling to reach the wreck site, near the town of Balasore in Odisha state. Officials have stepped up their investigation into the cause of the crash, saying that while they are looking into a failure of the electronic signaling system, they have not ruled out human error — or even sabotage.
The desperate journey to find the bodies of loved ones is complicated for many families due to a lack of train service, although on Sunday night some restored rail travel had begun. head in both directions. Officials said a special train would carry relatives from Kolkata, in neighboring West Bengal state, to Odisha. And the Odisha government has announced a free bus service on the interrupted train route.
Rahul Kumar, a doctor at the main hospital in Bhubaneswar, the capital of Odisha, who is assisting with rescue and relief efforts, said: “Most of these people are poor and it can take days to arrive. .
Information about the cause of three-dimensional accident part by part. What’s known so far: A high-speed passenger train collided with a parked freight train around 7 p.m. Friday and derailed. Several of its carriages crashed into another passenger train, leaving a sprawling landscape of twisted metal, crushed limbs and splattered blood.
India’s rail network is one of the largest in the world, transporting eight billion passengers annually. The disaster has cast a shadow over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts to modernize the country’s infrastructure, which he sees as a focus of his campaign for a third term. Modi’s government regularly publicizes investments in infrastructure expansion, but a recent official audit noted a clear imbalance in the budget.
The audit said that while India is sharply increasing its overall spending, including on a new fleet of semi-high-speed trains, the money it invests in safety for the rest of its fleet of more than 13,000 trains is growing. reduce.
Indian Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told reporters on Sunday that officials were investigating whether the electronic signaling system to prevent accidents was working as intended. But officials left open the possibility of sabotage and vowed to punish anyone responsible. Railway authorities have also asked India’s top investigative body, the Central Bureau of Investigation, to take over the investigation, the minister said.
Railway officials privately grumbled that by starting a high-profile investigation, political leaders were looking for scapegoats to distract from the well-proven truth: Despite India India claims that it has reduced the frequency of fatal rail accidents in recent years, and safety work on the country’s vast rail network remains severely underfunded.
For the families who arrived at the scene of the accident, the process of identifying and claiming their loved one was slow and grieving. Of the 275 people killed in the crash (officials initially said 288 died but later revised the number), only 88 bodies have been returned to their families since the crash. officials said. More than 1,100 others were injured.
The government in Odisha on Sunday moved about 100 bodies to the morgue at the main hospital in Bhubaneswar, and the morgue is operating at full capacity. The state government also released photos online of more than 160 dead, many in terrible condition, to help families identify victims.
About a dozen bodies were also placed in the hallway of a small school a few hundred meters from the scene of the accident. Others are kept in a mall in Balasore on large ice sheets covered with plastic sheets. But the ice melts quickly in the heat. Families who go to the park must first look at the victim’s face on a laptop. Then, if they see any similarities with a loved one, they’ll move closer to take a closer look.
Among the passengers aboard the Coromandel Express, one of the trains, were two friends, Debpriya Pramanik and Budhadeb Das, returning from the village of Baliara, in West Bengal, to do their construction work in the city. Vijayawada south. They convinced a third friend, Shamik Dutta, to join them.
Mr. Dutta had barely left Baliara before that, but two of his friends say they convinced him that the money they could make in Vijayawada was worth it.
How much? Mr. Dutta wants to know.
“Enough for people like us,” Mr. Das said he told him. Mr. Pramanik added that with this money Mr. Dutta could help take care of his parents.
On the Coromandel Express, three friends stood near the door of a crowded carriage, where everyone stood shoulder to shoulder. Just before 7pm on Friday, Mr Dutta said he needed to go to the bathroom and left his bag with friends.
That was the last time they saw him alive.
Interviews with three railway officials and press conferences by other officials provided insight into the moments before the crash.
The Coromandel Express, which had left Kolkata with about 1,250 passengers and was passing through Bahanaga Bazar station in Balasore, was traveling at about 80 mph; it is not allowed to stop there. At the same time, the Yesvantpur-Howrah Superfast Express, with 1,039 passengers on board, was leaving the station and heading in the opposite direction.
At 6:55 pm, Coromandel suddenly turn into a roundabout where a train carrying heavy iron ore was parked. When the first train hit the freight train, nearly 20 passenger cars derailed — some crashing into a farm on the other side and others crashing into the rear of the second passenger train.
Two senior railway officials, speaking to reporters in Delhi, said they had ascertained several factors: The Coromandel train received a green signal when it arrived at Bahanaga Bazar station, the train was not speeding. and do not pass the red signal.
The tracks are managed by an “interlocking system”, they say, which determines which signals – green to pass, yellow to slow down, red to stop – should be issued. for a train. Although the interlock system can be managed manually or electrically, officials have determined that the system at the station is electronic.
Sandeep Mathur, one of the two railway officers in charge of railway signals, told reporters: “It is called a fail-safe system, which means it will fail on the safer side.
Investigators are studying why the loop remains open and whether an additional layer of human monitoring is at fault. The behavior of officers at the signal station, not far from the crash site, as well as managers at Bahananga station about 500 yards away, is also being investigated, officials said.
The accident happened on the Southeast Railway, a vital network for millions of migrant workers who travel cheaply on fast trains that cut through India’s heartland. Many of the passengers – such as Mr. Das, Mr. Pramanik and Mr. Dutta – are from poorer regions of eastern and central India and are working in wealthier cities in the south.
During the collision, Mr. Das was knocked down and suffered minor injuries. Mr. Pramanik emerged with a broken arm and a head wound. Mr. Das said he continued to look for Mr. Dutta, but he was not at the hospital where Mr. Pramanik was being treated, so he went to a morgue a few miles away.
It was there that he found Mr. Dutta’s body, wrapped in a white sheet.
Mr Das said he didn’t recognize his friend’s face, only the clothes he was wearing when they boarded the train.
Mr Das said: “I don’t know what to say to his parents.
Atul Loke, Karan Deep Singh And Alex travel contribution report.
