Grief and mourning
“At midsections, trains run at their assigned speed and people are not expected to be on the tracks. At midsections, there is no railway staff posted,” he said.In his view, there could have been a bigger tragedy if the driver had applied emergency brakes.
By morning, the tracks at Joda Phatak had been cleared of the bodies and the body parts that were strewn after the accident.
Tensions ran high as police, which barricaded the area, tried chasing protesters away. “Why did the government not ensure proper security arrangements? Why was such function was allowed to take place near railway tracks?” asked Sujit Singh, one of the protesters.
If angry slogans like “Congress government hai hai” were heard at the residential area of Joda Phatak, loud cries broke the silence outside the hospitals.
It was a night of unspeakable horrors, said Vijay Kumar, who lost his 18-year-old son, Manish. A WhatsApp photograph of a head had flashed on his phone screen at 3 am, confirming his worst fears — his son was one of those killed.
His younger son, Ashish, returned safely, said Kumar, but the frantic search for Manish ended with that ‘ping’ on his phone. He has since been roaming from hospital to hospital looking for the remains of his elder son.
A leg was found and one hand, but they are not Manish’s. “My son was wearing blue jeans. This one is not wearing blue jeans. I have lost my world,” a grieving Kumar said outside Guru Nanak Hospital, where most of the injured were taken.
As people milled around the hospital compound, some stunned into silence by the enormity of the tragedy that felled their loved ones.
Among them was Sapna, who was on a WhatsApp call with her husband to relay the ‘Ravan Dahan’ event live to him, when the accident took place.
The 30-year-old, who suffered head injuries, said she saw body parts scattered around the tracks and a severed head. “When the effigy was set afire, people started moving away from the stage and towards the tracks,” she said.
She said they could not hear the train’s horn due to the sound of the bursting crackers.
Sapna lost her cousin and oneyear-old niece, who she said were not crushed by the train but in the stampede that ensued. Jagunandan, a 40-year-old wage labourer from Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh, who has suffered injuries in the head and leg, said he was not standing near the tracks but was pushed as people started running away after the effigy was set afire.
Recounting the minutes before the disaster, most of the injured said they could not hear the horn of the approaching train. They said another train had passed moments earlier. The sound of the firecrackers as the effigy came down and the speeding train led to commotion, triggering a stampede-like situation. The aftermath had its inevitable political ramifications.
Navjot Kaur Sidhu, former MLA and wife of Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu, was the chief guest of the event, reportedly organised by Saurabh Madan, the husband of Congress councillor Vijay Madan.
Opposition parties, including the Akali Dal, BJP and the AAP, demanded strict action against those who gave permission for holding the event. They held the Congress-led Punjab government responsible for allowing the Dussehra celebrations near the railway track.
Train traffic in the area was hit with 37 trains being cancelled and 16 trains diverted.