‘Signal system’ behind crash
Train death toll likely to reach over 288
BALASORE: India’s Railway Minister said yesterday the cause and people responsible for the country’s worst train crash in decades had been identified, pointing to an electronic signal system without giving further details.
“We have identified the cause of the accident and the people responsible for it,” India’s Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told news agency ANI, but said it was “not appropriate” to give details before a final investigation report.
The death toll from Friday’s crash near Balasore, in the eastern state of Odisha, was expected to climb above 288.
Mr Ashwini said the “change that occurred during electronic interlocking, the accident happened due to that”, a technical term referring to a complex signal system designed to stop trains colliding by arranging their movement on the tracks.
“Whoever did it, and how it happened, will be found out after proper investigation,” he added.
There was confusion about the exact sequence of events but reports cited railway officials as saying that a signalling error had sent the Coromandal Express running south from Kolkata to Chennai onto a side track.
It slammed into a freight train and the wreckage derailed an express running north from India’s tech hub Bengaluru to Kolkata that was also passing the site.
Odisha state’s chief secretary Pradeep Jena confirmed that about 900 injured people had been hospitalised.
Desperate relatives searched yesterday for loved ones missing after India’s worst train disaster in decades, and the death toll was expected to climb above 288 as authorities searched for clues to the cause.
Debris was piled high at the site of Friday night’s crash near Balasore, in the eastern state of Odisha, with compartments smashed and the bloodstained wreckage of some carriages flung far from the tracks.
“I saw bloodied scenes, mangled bodies and one man with a severed arm being desperately helped by his injured son,” researcher Anubhav Das, 27, told said after surviving the crash.
There was confusion about the exact sequence of events, but reports cited railway officials as saying that a signalling error had sent the Coromandal Express running south from Kolkata to Chennai onto a side track.
It slammed into a freight train and the wreckage derailed an express running north from India’s tech hub Bengaluru to Kolkata that was also passing the site.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the crash site and injured passengers being treated in hospital and said “no one responsible” would be spared.
“I pray that we get out of this sad moment as soon as possible,” he told state broadcaster Doordarshan.
A high school close to the crash site had been turned into a makeshift morgue, but officials said many of the bodies were so disfigured that many of the distraught families could only spot their loved ones by pieces of jewellery.
Many of the bodies were being transferred to bigger centres.