India’s railway minister announced on Sunday that the cause and those responsible for India’s worst rail disaster in decades had been identified, while pointing to an electronic signaling system. According to the Minister, “the change that occurred during the electronic interlocking is at the origin of the accident”, in reference to a complex set of signals managing traffic on the tracks to prevent the collision of trains.
Confusion reigns at this point, but the Times of India, citing the preliminary investigation report, said on Sunday that “human error” may have caused the collision between the three trains. Search and rescue operations for the victims ended on Saturday in India the day after the collision between three trains which left at least 288 dead and 900 injured.
AFP journalists saw overturned wagons, and rescuers working tirelessly to extract survivors. Many bodies covered in white shrouds lay next to the tracks at the scene of the tragedy, which occurred on Friday evening near Balasore, about 200 kilometers from Bhubaneswar, the capital of the state of Odisha, in eastern India. .
Confusion reigns over the precise sequence of events, but the media, quoting railway officials, indicated that a signaling error was at the origin of the tragedy. It has, according to them, rerouted the Coromandal Express, linking Calcutta to Madras, which hit a stationary freight train. This accident in turn led to the derailment of an express train which provided a link between Bangalore and Calcutta. Hiranmay Rath, a student whose home is near the train tracks, rushed to help. Within hours, he said he saw more “death and distress” than he could imagine. “Imagine looking at – or extracting – someone’s crushed body, severed arm or leg. »
Present in the last carriage of the second train, Anubhav Das said he heard “shrill and horrible sounds coming from afar”. “I saw mutilated bodies and a man with a severed arm desperately helped by his injured son,” the 27-year-old told AFP. Rescue operations ended on Saturday evening, after the disemboweled carcasses were searched for survivors. “All bodies and injured passengers have been evacuated from the scene of the accident,” a manager of the emergency coordination room in Balasore, near the scene of the tragedy, told AFP.
Odisha State Fire Service Director General Sudhanshu Sarangi said the death toll was expected to rise to 288 and could reach 380. “No one responsible” for the accident will be spared, said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who visited the scene of the disaster on Saturday and met with injured people in hospital. “I pray that we get out of this sad moment as soon as possible,” he told public broadcaster Doordarshan.
All hospitals between the crash site and Bhubaneswar are receiving victims, authorities said. Some 200 ambulances, and even buses, were mobilized to transport them. The army has also been mobilized to help, Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said.