India blames signal failure for train accident as death toll nears 300

Indian officials said preliminary findings suggested a signal failure led to a train crash on Friday that killed nearly 300 people, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed to punish those responsible.

India’s Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnav said on Sunday that the government has “identified the cause of the incident and those responsible for it”. Initial findings suggested a failure in the “electronic interlocking” system, which controls the movement of trains, resulted in the three-way collision around Balasore station in the eastern state of Odisha.

According to government reports, the southbound Coromandel Express, a high-speed passenger train, got a wrong signal and went onto a back-up track, where it crashed into a stationary freight train. A third northbound passenger train hit the derailed coaches.

The accident killed at least 288 people and injured over 800, making it India’s worst rail accident in more than two decades.

“The government will leave no stone unturned in the treatment of the injured,” Modi said during his visit to the site on Saturday. “Those found guilty will be given the harshest punishment.”

Several opposition leaders blamed Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party for the accident, accused the government of neglecting investment in rail safety in the region, and called for Vaishnav to resign. The minister dismissed the demands, saying he was focused on relief efforts and “this is not the time to do politics”.

Modi has prioritized upgrading the country’s vast rail network, parts of which are antiquated. The system dates back to the 19th century and plays a vital role in moving people and goods across the country of 1.4 billion people.

Before the accident, Modi was scheduled to inaugurate a new express train in western India on Saturday. However, an automatic safety system introduced last year to prevent collisions was yet to be implemented on the eastern Indian highway where Friday’s accident took place.

The country has had to grapple with a series of train accidents. Friday’s case was the deadliest since 1995, when a crash in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh killed more than 350 people. In 2016, over 150 people had died after a train derailed in the same state.

A government study found that the number of accidents had fallen from more than 800 per year in the early 1970s to 22 in 2021. According to a rail safety audit last year by the Comptroller and Auditor General, derailments were the most common cause of recent incidents. of India’s general, who said that spending on track renewal had fallen since 2017.

Trains on Friday were packed with migrant laborers and their families traveling between their homes in eastern states such as West Bengal and relatively prosperous southern cities including Chennai and Bengaluru, where many go in search of employment.

Passenger Brahma Das told the Times of India, “I still can’t believe that I survived.” “I had to crawl over the bloodied body of a passenger to get out of the train in the dark. I could not see anything. There was smoke all around.”

Hundreds of rescue workers, volunteers and military personnel worked to move casualties and clear a trail of debris amid sweltering heat of at least 35C over the weekend. With hospitals and morgues overcrowded, about 200 bodies were taken to a nearby school, where relatives from across India gathered to search for missing loved ones.

“The bodies have started decomposing in the heat,” Chhoturam Chowdhary, who came to the school from West Bengal to meet two of his relatives who were going to Chennai for work, told The Indian Express. “Many faces cannot be recognized. , , I don’t know what I will say when I come back home.