- By Soutik Biswas in Delhi and Adam Durbin in London
- BBC news
The BBC’s Archana Shukla in Cuttack: “Misery and chaos” at hospital treating train crash injured
India’s railway minister has suggested that a signal fault was the cause of the Odisha rail disaster, with “changes in electronic interlocking” the likely cause.
Ashwini Vaishnaw later said the cause and the people responsible for the fatal crash of three trains in eastern India were known but did not give details.
A report on India’s worst railway accident of this century is over.
Meanwhile, the death toll was revised to 275 after some bodies were counted twice, officials said.
Of the 1,175 injured who were taken to the hospital, 793 have been discharged. Some families are still searching for their loved ones.
The crash saw a passenger train collide with a stationary goods train and derail, after being mistakenly steered onto a loop track on the side of the main line.
The derailed carriages then hit the rear carriages of a second passenger train that was traveling in the opposite direction.
In a press conference on Sunday, Jaya Verma Sinha from India’s Railway Board said the two passenger trains approached a station in Balasore district under a green signal – indicating it was safe – within seconds. each other at the correct speed of less than 130kph (81mph).
He said passenger trains were supposed to pass each other on the main lines but the Coromandel Express collided with a steel-laden freight train on the loop line, causing the engine and some coaches to derail. on top of new shipments. .
The passenger train took the full impact of the collision and the freight train did not derail, or even move, he told reporters.
The Howrah Superfast Express was about to cross in the opposite direction, but two of its rear coaches were hit by the derailed Coromandel Express.
Ms Verma Sinha said there was no “issue with the electronic interlocking system” and said investigations showed “some sort of a signaling interference” rather than a failure.
“Manual, incidental, weather related, due to wear and tear related, maintenance failure, everything will come out after the inquiry,” he added.
In railway signaling the electronic interlocking system sets routes for each train in a set area, ensuring the safe movement of trains along the track.
Infrastructure expert Partha Mukhopadhyay told the BBC that it would not be possible for green signals to be displayed on the main line if the track is set for a loop.
“Signal interlocking is bound to fail and this level of failure is unprecedented,” said Mr Mukhopadhyay, from the Delhi-based think tank Center for Policy Research.
On Saturday Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the crash site and promised that anyone found guilty would be “punished strictly”.
Around 2,000 people are believed to have been on board two passenger trains – the Coromandel Express, traveling between Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) and Chennai (formerly Madras) and the Howrah Superfast Express traveling from Yesvantpur to Howrah – when The crash happened at around 19:00 (13:30 GMT) on Friday.
Odisha state official Pradeep Jena told the BBC that at least 187 bodies remain unidentified and that officials have uploaded pictures of the victims to government websites and will conduct DNA testing if necessary.
The rescue work ended on Saturday and efforts were underway to clear the wreckage and restart train traffic, officials said.
India has one of the largest railway networks in the world with millions of passengers using it every day, but a lot of railway infrastructure needs to be improved.
Trains in India can get very crowded at this time of year, with more people traveling during the school holidays.
The country’s worst train disaster was in 1981, when an overcrowded passenger train was thrown off the tracks and into a river during a cyclone in the state of Bihar, killing about 800 people. man.
