Crushed train cars were cleared and jumbled tracks were straightened and rejoined as workers scrambled on Sunday to quickly restore a major rail line in eastern India, two days after the country’s worst rail disaster in decades.
The families of the victims are still struggling to reach the devastated site near Balasore town in Odisha state. Officials intensified their investigation into the cause of the accident, saying while they were looking into a malfunction of the electronic signaling system, they did not rule out human error – or even sabotage.
Desperate journeys to retrieve the bodies of loved ones have been complicated for many families by the lack of train service, although by late Sunday night, some train movements had resumed in both directions on the restored tracks. Officials said a special train will take the relatives to Odisha from the neighboring West Bengal city of Kolkata. And the Odisha government announced free bus service on the disrupted rail route.
“Most of these people are poor, and it can take days for them to arrive,” said Rahul Kumar, a doctor at the main hospital in Odisha’s capital Bhubaneswar, who is helping with rescue and relief efforts.
Information about the cause of the three-way accident is fragmented. What we know so far: A high-speed passenger train collided with a stationary freight train and derailed on Friday around 7 pm. Some of its cars collided with another passenger train, leaving a sprawling tableau of twisted metal, crushed limbs and spattered blood.
India’s railway network is the largest in the world, carrying eight billion passengers a year. The disaster backfired on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts to modernize the country’s infrastructure, which he has made a centerpiece of his campaign for a third term. Mr. Modi’s government has often touted its investments in expanding infrastructure, but a recent official audit noted significant imbalances in the budget.
While India is ramping up overall spending, including on a fleet of new semi-high-speed trains, the amount invested in the safety of the remaining 13,000-plus trains is falling, the audit said.
Indian Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnav told reporters on Sunday that authorities are investigating whether the electronic signal system to prevent accidents did not work as intended. But authorities have left open the possibility of sabotage and vowed to punish anyone responsible. Railway officials have asked the Central Bureau of Investigation, India’s premier investigative agency, to take over the probe, the minister said.
By launching a high-profile investigation, railway officials grumbled privately that political leaders were looking for victims to avoid the well-grounded truth: Despite India’s trumpeting that it has reduced the frequency of mass-accidents in recent years, the work to ensure safety on the country’s vast railway network remains deeply underfunded.
For families who traveled to the crash site, the process of identifying and claiming their loved ones was slow and traumatic. Of the 275 people who died in the crash (officials initially said 288 died but later revised the toll), only 88 bodies were returned to their families after the crash, officials said. More than 1,100 people were injured.
The Odisha government on Sunday shifted around 100 bodies to the mortuary at the main hospital in Bhubaneswar, which is at capacity. The state government published online photos of more than 160 dead, many in dire conditions, to help families identify the victims.
About a dozen bodies lay in the hallway of a small school a few hundred yards from the crash site. Others were kept on large blocks of ice covered with plastic sheets in a business park in Balasore. But the ice was melting fast in the heat. Families who first came to the park had to look at the faces of the victims on a laptop. Then, if they saw any resemblance to a loved one, they moved in for a closer look.
Among the passengers on one of the trains, the Coromandel Express, were two friends, Debpriya Pramanik and Budhadeb Das, who were returning to their construction work in the southern city of Vijayawada from Baliara village in West Bengal. He persuaded a third friend, Shamik Dutta, to join him.
Mr. Dutta said he had never left Baliar before, but two of his friends convinced him that the money he could earn in Vijayawada was worth it.
how much Mr. Dutta wanted to know.
“Enough is enough for the likes of us,” Mr. Das had told him. Mr Pramanik added that with this money Mr Dutta could help take care of his parents.
On the Coromandel Express, three friends stood at the door of a crowded compartment where people were packed shoulder to shoulder. Just before 7pm on Friday, Mr Dutta said he needed to use the restroom and left his bags with his friends.
That was the last time they saw him alive.
Interviews with three railway officials and press conferences by other officials gave an insight into the moments leading up to the accident.
The Coromandel Express, with about 1,250 passengers, had left Calcutta and was passing Bahanaga Bazar station, Balasore, traveling at a speed of about 80 miles an hour; It wasn’t going to stop there. At the same time, the Yeshwantpur-Howrah Superfast Express, with 1,039 passengers, left the station and was heading in the opposite direction.
At 6:55 p.m., the Coromandel suddenly turned into a looping track where a freight train carrying heavy iron ore was stopped. When the first train collided with the freight train, about 20 passenger cars were derailed – some thrown into the fields on the other side and others hit the tail of the second passenger train.
Speaking to reporters in Delhi, two senior railway officials said they have firmly established several factors: the Coromandel had received a green signal as it reached Bahanaga Bazar station, the train was not speeding and it had not crossed the red signal.
The tracks are operated by an “interlocking system” that determines which signal to pass to the train – green, yellow to slow, red to stop, he said. While interlocking systems can be operated manually or electronically, officials have decided that the one at the station will be electronic.
“It is called a fail-safe system, which means it fails on the safe side,” Sandeep Mathur, one of the two railway officials in charge of railway signalling, told reporters.
Investigators are studying why the loop was open and whether an additional layer of human oversight failed. Officials said the conduct of officials at the signal house, stone-throwing from the accident site, as well as the manager of Bahananga station, about 500 yards away, are also under investigation.
The accident occurred on the South Eastern Railway, a critical network for millions of migrant workers who travel cheaply on high-speed trains that cut through India’s heartland. Many passengers – Mr. Das, Mr. Pramanik and Mr. Dutta – hailed from the poorer eastern and central parts of India and was employed in the more affluent cities of the south.
At the time of the accident, Mr. Mr Pramanik came out with a fractured hand and head injuries. Mr. Das kept looking for Mr. Dutta, but he was not at the hospital where Mr. Pramanik was being treated, so he traveled to a mortuary a few miles away.
There they found Mr Dutta’s body wrapped in a white sheet.
Mr. Das did not recognize his friend’s face, only the clothes he was wearing when he boarded the train.
“I don’t know what to tell his parents,” Mr. Das said.
Atul Loke, Karan Deep Singh And Alex Travelli Contribution report.
