AT LEAST 60 people died after a speeding passenger express train ploughed into another waiting at a station in India’s West Bengal province yesterday, and officials feared the death toll could rise as rescue operations continued.
The force of the crash at Sainthia station, 150km north of Bengal’s capital Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), in which at least 80 people were also badly injured, lifted one carriage off the tracks, smashing it into a footbridge.
News channels showed bodies and badly injured passengers being extricated from the wreckage by emergency services personnel equipped with oxyacetylene torches to cut through the mangled steel. They were helped by a massive crowd of onlookers who had gathered.
Railway minister Mamata Banerjee said officials were investigating the cause of the incident, which occurred at around 2am when most people aboard both trains were asleep. She did not rule out the possibility of sabotage.
“We have some doubts in our mind,” she said, adding that the authorities would take all the “necessary steps and action” to find out who was responsible.
In May some 150 people died at a location nearby when a passenger express slammed into an oncoming goods train in a collision reportedly engineered by Maoist rebels active in the region.
Yesterday’s incident occurred when the Uttarbanga Express running at high speed overshot the railway signal at Sainthia station, and its engine telescoped into the rear of the stationary Vanachal Express. The incident destroyed two passenger cars and a luggage van. Officials said the majority of casualties were in the unreserved compartments at the rear of the standing train, normally packed far beyond capacity.
The majority of commuters were poor day-wage workers and labourers heading to the city after spending the weekend at home.
“I was fast asleep on the top berth when there was a massive bang like an explosion,” one passenger told a news channel. “I was flung from the berth, and then people started shouting and there was complete panic,” he said.
Another survivor, Rajni Dhar, said she heard a loud bang and then blacked out. “When I regained consciousness, I screamed for help and was pulled out of the train compartment,” she told a local news channel.
A passenger on the second train, Mohammed Iris (52) managed to crawl out of his coach an hour after it overturned.
“I was awake when the accident happened. Our train had been given the signal to move but it had barely started moving when I felt an enormous jolt and then I felt the coach turning over.
“Some 8-10 people fell on top of me and my left thumb was almost severed from my hand.” When he finally managed to crawl out, local residents pulled him to safety.
India’s state-run rail system – one of the world’s largest rail networks, spread over 63,327km – is plagued by scores of incidents and mishaps each year.
Unbelievably overcrowded, it is saddled with outdated technology which invariably causes mishaps.
In India’s financial capital Mumbai, some 3,500 people die each year on the city’s suburban railway network, which transports some eight million commuters daily. This is the highest fatality rate of any rail system globally.
Many of the deaths are caused after passengers crossing the tracks on foot are hit by speeding trains. Other commuters who sit on train roofs to avoid suffocating crowds die after being electrocuted by overhead high voltage cables or crushed by passing trains while hanging from carriage doors and windows. – (additional reporting PA)