In India, trains start running again by crash site
Cause sought for nation’s deadliest rail disaster
A coal train, blaring its horn in the dark, was the first of dozens of trains to rumble past the Bahanaga Bazar rail station, the site of one of the deadliest train disasters in India’s history, as rail lines reopened there after midnight Monday.
The restoration of the important rail route, watched by senior train officials and a crowd of onlookers, was a step toward easing the disruption of the catastrophic crash that killed at least 275 people and injured more than 1,200. Workers toiled over the weekend to clear the wreck and restore the mangled tracks.
But with its return, officials focused their efforts on a somber challenge: identifying about 100 victims whose bodies are lying unclaimed in morgues and hospitals.
About 170 of the bodies had been identified as of Monday, said Pradeep Jena, the chief secretary of Odisha state, adding they were still receiving calls on help lines set up for families of the missing. Jena said officials hoped to arrive at a final death toll by Monday evening, but that officials were not taking any chances.
“Every paper, every hospital, every reconciliation is very important,” he said.
“Our task is not over,” said Ashwini Vaishnaw, India’s railway minister, after the resumption of train service. “We need to make sure that family members of the missing people should reach them as early as possible.”
To help identify them, the state government on Monday released a 168-page document online with images of those who died, along with lists of people being treated at hospitals.
The suspended train service had hindered families of the victims from traveling to Balasore, in Odisha state, and claiming their loved ones. Some had arrived via special train services, others in cars Monday morning provided by their local governments. Others were still making the journey.
For the relatives who arrived in the state, the horror of the finding a loved one was often heightened by the disfigurement of some bodies, which has complicated identification.
Two men traveled hundreds of miles from their home state, West Bengal, to the main hospital in Bhubaneswar, the capital of Odisha, where more than 100 bodies were being kept. One, Ayuf S.K., was searching for the body of his brother, while the other, Dilip Kumar Sabar, was looking for his brother-in-law.
But a commotion erupted outside the hospital Sunday after both men said the same body was their loved one. Without adequate proof, police refused to hand the body over to either man, and state authorities agreed to carry out a DNA test.
Jena said that the state would use all legal routes to identify bodies. But in a worstcase scenario, it was possible that some unidentified bodies would have to be cremated, he said, though that decision had not yet been made.
Authorities allowed some stranded trains, limited to a speed of about 6 miles per hour, to run past the site Monday, but two affected side lines remained inactive. At least 50 trains passed on the restored tracks, Vaishnaw said.
Officials have shared preliminary information about the sequence of events in the threeway accident: Around 7 p.m. local time Friday, a high-speed passenger train struck an idled parked freight train, derailing some cars. The derailed cars then slammed into a second passenger train, causing a horrific tangle of crushed metal and bodies.
Questions around responsibility spilled into another day as opposition politicians, who have called for Vaishnaw’s resignation, accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of not doing enough to ensure rail safety.
“Consistently flawed decision-making has made traveling by rail unsafe and has in turn compounded the problems of our people,” said Mallikarjun Kharge, an opposition leader in Parliament, in an open letter to Modi, adding it was “incumbent upon the government” to determine the reasons behind the incident.
Railway authorities have asked for the case to be handled by India’s top investigation agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation, Vaishnaw told reporters Sunday.
Officials have focused on the malfunctioning of an electronic signal system as a cause for the crash, but have not ruled out sabotage. Authorities are investigating whether negligence played a role; they have not identified any suspects.