‘Saw coach fly, enter my house’
RAILWAYS IN THE DOCK Questions over safety on the tracks and official apathy, even as locals, rescue teams join hands to provide relief to Utkal Express victims
KHATAULI (MUZAFFARNAGAR): Like most evenings, Jagat Singh was sitting on the front porch of his house on Saturday, not paying much attention to trains whizzing by on the tracks nearby. Then one grabbed the Khatauli farmer’s attention.
The Utkal Express, which does not stop at Khatauli station, “zor se leh rane lagi (started shaking violently)” in the distance, according to Singh. The lurching train gobbled up the distance and within seconds, a stupefied Singh had an unwelcome, airborne metal mass heading his way.
“The train derailed from the tracks barely 10 metres away from my house and many coaches derailed, ramming each other. One of them launched into the air and crashed into my house,” Singh, who is in his seven ties, told HT on Sunday. Singh’s son, Pintu Choudhary, was next to him. Pintu grabbed his father and dragged him inside the house.
Amid an unearthly noise and dust cloud, the father-son duo cowered in the house. Or, what remained of it. Carriage S2 of the train had crashed into Singh’s house, jutting into his drawing room.
The rest of the coach rested on his front porch, a mere foot away from where Singh was sitting moments ago.
The other end of the S2 coach rested over the pantry coach, with its doors shattered.
Singh said he had never expe- rienced anything remotely close to what he lived through on Saturday. However, he did not escape without scars. “Flying debris hit my father’ s right leg, on the shin, and fractured it,” said Choudhary .“The other members of our house inside were trapped momentarily, unable to make sense of what had happened ,” he added.
A while later, after Singh and his son regained their bearings, the enormity of the derailment hit them. “I saw passengers screaming and crying for help. It was terrible. I have lived in this house since 1972 and noise of trains is a part of our lives, but this was darawna (scary),” said Singh, a respected member of the local community.