Families protest amid anger over safety

TRAIN TRAGEDY TOLL UP: Chief medical officer for Amritsar said 59 deaths had been confirmed

AMRITSAR: Angry relatives staged a protest on Saturday on the tracks where a speeding train ploughed into crowds watching fireworks, killing about 60 people in the latest disaster to bedevil the country’s railway network.

The Jalandhar-amritsar express was hurtling at 90 kilometres per hour when it hit scores of people who had gathered on the tracks late on Friday to get a view of a firework-packed effigy of the demon king Ravana for a Hindu festival.

Many of the victims were dismembered beyond recognition and police said it would take several days to complete the identification of the dead.

Some desperate families went from hospital to hospital in the northern city of Amritsar on Saturday looking for missing relatives, while the first funerals of some victims were held.

Hardeep Singh, chief medical officer for Amritsar, said 59 deaths had been confirmed and 90 people had been injured, with seven in critical condition.

Singh said only 25 bodies had been identified so far. Amritsar’s main hospital did not have enough space in its morgue, and some corpses were laid outside. The disaster led to new demands for safety reforms to the country’s accident-plagued railway system, which records thousands of deaths each year.

Sporadic protests broke out near the accident site, with scores of protesters calling for action against the local authorities and the train driver who was questioned by police on Saturday.

But the minister of sate for railways ruled out any punitive action against his staff, including the driver, saying the national carrier was not at fault.

“There was no lapse on our part and no action against the driver will be initiated,” Manoj Sinha told reporters in New Delhi, adding “trains travel in speed only”.

Investigators said victims did not hear the train because the drone of the locomotive was drowned out by firecrackers. Another train had narrowly missed the crowds two minutes earlier, officials said.

— Reuters Family members cry after seeing the body of their relative after a commuter train ran through a crowd of people on the railway tracks on Friday, outside a hospital in Amritsar, on Saturday.