Hope for survivors fades in India train disaster
The death toll from India’s worst train accident in years rose to 145 on Monday, as rescuers used cranes to lift the twisted metal wreckage to check for more bodies underneath.
The disaster that took place on Sunday, November 20, involving a fast train – the Indore-Patna Express – which was traversing at around 120 kilometers per hour has once again renewed anxiety about the cheap safety standards of India’s state-run rail network, the fourth largest in the world. A lifeline for millions, the railways suffer from chronic underinvestment, which has left it with ageing tracks and outdated rolling stock. More than 200 additional travelers are injured.
The Railways also began fix work on the track.
Railways spokesperson Anil Kumar Saxena said that the rescue operations conducted by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) as well as local police and the army was called off at 2 p.m. after all the bodies in the mangled coaches were recovered.
A high-level probe was yesterday ordered by Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu, who promised “strictest possible action” against the guilty.
Meanwhile, schoolchildren were the first ones to reach the site of the accident and help in rescuing those who were trapped in the coaches that had gone off tracks. More than 40 people are seriously injured, Rahul Srivastav, the press officer for the Uttar Pradesh police told CNN.
It was not immediately clear what caused the crash or how many people were traveling on the train, Ahmed said.
A policeman stands at the site of one of India’s deadliest train crashes in years.
Unable to forget the trauma they underwent post derailment of their train, it took them quite some time to believe that they had actually reached their destination alive and were being hugged by their loved ones.
He has also shied away from raising highly subsidised fares that leave the railways with next to nothing for investment – by some analyst estimates, they need Rs20tn ($293.34bn) of investment by 2020. 14 coaches of Indore-Patna express were derailed and some of them completely mangled after the accident.
Twenty-year-old Ruby Gupta, who broke an arm in the accident, couldn’t locate her clothes and jewellery.
She told the Times of India that most of the people travelling with her had been found but that her father was still missing.
According to the Rail Board’s statistics over 800 accidents were reported between 2009-10 and 2014-15 in which 620 people and over 1,800 were injured. The worst incident occurred in 1981, when a passenger train fell into the Baghmati River in the north of the country, killing almost 800 people.