Odisha train accident

A hospital is to start embalming the unidentified victims of India's worst train crash this century, with more than 100 bodies still yet to be claimed by families.

Anatomy and forensic experts were called to AIIMS Bhubaneswar to engage in the process of preserving the bodies at the hospital's overstretched mortuary, which does not have refrigeration facilities.

It is now four days since three trains collided in the eastern state of Odisha, killing at least 278 people, many of them migrant labourers travelling in the trains’ lower class carriages.

"About 1,100 people were injured in the accident, out of which about 900 people were discharged after treatment. Around 200 people are being treated in various hospitals in the state," said Eastern Central Railways official Rinkesh Roy in an update on the figures.

The accident has sparked questions over the safety of India's vast railways network, which is used by more than 22 million people every day.

Officials are investigating whether the collision occurred due to "deliberate interference" with an electronic safety system, according to reports.

Odisha hospital calls embalming experts to preserve dead bodies for longer

Restoration work in India's worst railway disaster comes to an end

Cause of horror India rail crash that killed 275 revealed

Another goods train derails in Odisha

First responder says police took an hour to reach site after train crash

05:02 , Shweta Sharma

AIIMS hospital in the Odisha capital Bhubaneswar has begun the process of embalming process dead bodies from Friday's train accident, as the identification of victims is expected to take longer with some cases where multiple families are claiming one body.

More than 12 anatomy and forensic experts from nearby states have been called to begin the process to preserve the bodies for longer, reported the Indian Express.

Even though the embalming process is normally done as soon as possible after death, the decision has been made now to preserve the unclaimed bodies from Friday's crash until they can be handed to their next of kin, Prabhas Ranjan Tripathy, a faculty member in the anatomy department at AIIMS Bhubaneswar, told the newspaper.

He said the bodies were first kept in a local school before they were shifted to the mortuary of the hospital as no hospital near the accident site was equipped to handle such a large number of casualties.

The hospital officials said some bodies are unrecognisable due to the accident and decomposition and there have been cases where one body was claimed by more than one family.

The officials are using face recognition technology to match the bodies with data in the telecom database to identify the bodies.

02:30 , Sam Rkaina

Gura Pallay was watching another train pass by the one he was sitting in when he heard sudden, loud screeching. Before he could make sense of what was happening, he was thrown out of the train.

Pallay, 24, landed next to the tracks along with metal wreckage of the train he’d been riding in, and instantly lost consciousness. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the twisted remains of three trains on the tracks.

His train had derailed after colliding with a stopped freight train. Another passenger train, the one he had seen pass by moments earlier, had hit the derailed carriages.

"I saw it with my own eyes, but I still can't describe what I saw. I am haunted by it," he said Sunday at a hospital, where he lay on a stretcher with a broken leg and dark wounds on his face and arms.

Pallay is a laborer, like most of the people onboard the two passenger trains that crashed Friday in the eastern Odisha state, killing 275 people and injuring hundreds. He was traveling to Chennai city in southern India to take up a job in a paper mill factory when the Coromandel Express crashed with a goods freight train, knocking it off track, and was then hit by a second train coming from the opposite direction on a parallel track.

"I never imagined something like this could happen, but I guess it was our fate," he said.

01:20 , Sam Rkaina

Passengers aboard a train in eastern India on Monday watched from their windows as they passed the site of one of the country's deadliest rail crashes in decades.

The derailment that killed 275 people and injured nearly 1,200 more was caused by an error in the electronic signalling system that led a train to wrongly change tracks and crash into a freight train, officials said Sunday.

Authorities worked to clear the mangled wreckage of the two passenger trains that derailed Friday night in Balasore district in Odisha state.

Tuesday 6 June 2023 00:25 , Sam Rkaina

The King has sent a message of condolence to the president of India after the country's deadliest rail disaster in decades.

Nearly 300 people died and more than 1,000 were injured when three trains collided on Friday in the state of Odisha.

Charles, who travelled to Romania last week for a private break, said he and the Queen were "most profoundly shocked and saddened" by the "dreadful accident" outside Balasore.

The King added: "I would like to express our deepest possible condolences to the families of all those who have so tragically lost their lives."

He recalled visiting Odisha as Prince of Wales, saying: "I do hope you know what a special place India and the people of India have in our hearts.

"I have particularly fond memories of visiting Odisha in 1980 and meeting some of its people on that occasion."

The King, who signed his message Charles R, told President Droupadi Murmu: "I pray, therefore, that you may be able to convey our most heartfelt prayers and sympathy to all those who have been affected by this appalling tragedy, together with our special thoughts for the people of Odisha."

Monday 5 June 2023 23:30 , Sam Rkaina

The crash in Balasore occurred as Prime Minister Narendra Modi is focusing on the modernization of India's colonial-era railroad network.

The South Asian nation has one of the world's most extensive and complicated railway systems with more than 40,000 miles of track, 14,000 passenger trains and 8,000 stations.

Spread across the country from the Himalayas in the north to tropical ports in the south, it has been weakened by decades of mismanagement and neglect. Despite efforts to improve safety, several hundred accidents happen every year.

Most train accidents are blamed on human error or outdated signaling equipment.

In August 1995, two trains collided near New Delhi, killing 358 people in one of India's worst-ever train accidents.

In 2016, a passenger train slid off the tracks between the cities of Indore and Patna, killing 146 people. More than 22 million people ride trains across India every day.

Monday 5 June 2023 22:25 , Sam Rkaina

Usman Ansari, who came from Bihar to collect the body of his brother-in-law, Kasim Mia, said spent 24 hours on the road.

He first took a train to Howrah in West Bengal state, and then another to Kharagpur, in the same state.

From there he, along with two other friends, took a bus to the site of the crash, where they were told the bodies had been moved to Bhubaneswar.

The three of them rented a car to drive to the hospital, where Ansari was finally able to identify and collect his brother-in-law's body.

"Kasim used to say he wanted to do everything for his children," he said, adding that compensation promised by the federal government would help take care of the man's four young children.

Monday 5 June 2023 21:30 , Sam Rkaina

Friday's crash was one of the worst rail disasters in India's history.

Investigators said that a signaling failure might have been the cause of the disaster, in which a passenger train hit a freight train, derailing on the tracks before being hit by another passenger train coming in the opposite direction on a parallel track.

The collision involved two passenger trains, the Coromandel Express traveling from Howrah in West Bengal state to Chennai in Tamil Nadu state, and the Yesvantpur-Howrah Superfast Express traveling from Bengaluru in Karnataka to Howrah, officials said.

Many people had to make arduous journeys to reach the hospital.

At least 123 trains scheduled to pass through Odisha were either cancelled or delayed after the accident, Indian railways said Sunday.

The disruption led air fares to Odisha to spike, prompting India's civil aviation ministry to warn airlines over abnormal surges in pricing.

Monday 5 June 2023 20:30 , Sam Rkaina

So far only 45 bodies have been identified, and 33 have been handed over to relatives, said Mayur Sooryavanshi, an administrator who was overseeing the identification process at the hospital in the capital of Odisha state, about 125 miles south of the site of the train crash in Balasore.

Upendra Ram began searching for his son, Retul Ram, Sunday, after traveling some 850 kilometers (520 miles) from neighboring Bihar state. The day-long journey in a rented car, which cost him 35,000 rupees ($423), was exhausting for Ram. Retul, 17, had been on his way to Chennai to find work, Ram said.

After spending hours looking at photographs of the dead, Ram identified his son around noon Monday.

"I just want to take the dead body and go back home. He was a very good son," said Ram, adding that Retul had dropped out of school and wanted to earn money for the family.

"My wife and daughter can't stop crying at home. They are asking me to bring the body back quickly," he said, wiping tears from his eyes with a red scarf he had tied around his head.

Monday 5 June 2023 19:25 , Sam Rkaina

Families of the victims of India's deadliest train crash in decades filled a hospital in Bhubaneswar city on Monday to identify and collect bodies of relatives, after the crash that killed 275 people.

Distraught relatives of passengers killed in the crash Friday lined up outside the eastern city's All India Institute of Medical Sciences. Meanwhile, survivors being treated in hospitals said they were still trying to make sense of the horrific disaster.

Outside the hospital, two large screens cycled through photos of the bodies, their faces so bloodied and charred that they were hardly recognizable.

Each body had a number assigned to it, and relatives stood near the screen and watched as the photos changed, looking out for details like clothing for clues.

Many of the people waiting said they had spent days on desperate journeys from neighboring states, travelling in multiple trains, buses or rented cars to identify and claim bodies, a process that stretched into a third day.

Below, Jenima Mondal kisses a photograph of her son Mamjur Ali Mondal after receiving his body from the mortuary after he was killed.

Monday 5 June 2023 18:35 , Sam Rkaina

It has been more than three days since India witnessed one of the deadliest train crashes in the country's history, but anguished and increasingly frustrated families are still running between hospitals and makeshift mortuaries in Odisha to try and find their loved ones.

Authorities began a formal investigation on Monday and said the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India's equivalent of the FBI, will look into whether criminal charges should be brought over the three-train crash that killed at least 275 passengers, though there is mounting concern here in Odisha that the actual death toll may prove to be considerably higher.

Click here for the full story.

Monday 5 June 2023 17:40 , Eleanor Noyce

A young man in his twenties wails as he runs towards the mortuary, moments after receiving the news he had been dreading – that his brother is among the 275 victims of India‘s deadliest rail crash this century, and that now he must identify his remains.

Like many of the relatives gathering here at the largest hospital in Bhubaneswar, Sheikh Sahagir travelled for hours overnight after hearing on TV about the crash involving three trains including the Coromandel Express, on which his 20-year-old brother Sheikh Sahid Alam was a passenger.

Injured passengers recall the horrific night of the crash as relatives of the dead face a race against time to find their loved ones’ remains. Alisha Rahaman Sarkar reports from Odisha:

Train crash survivor: ‘Suddenly everything went silent. And then there were screams’

Monday 5 June 2023 17:10 , Eleanor Noyce

Gura Pallay was watching another train pass by the one he was sitting in when he heard sudden, loud screeching. Before he could make sense of what was happening, he was thrown out of the train.

Pallay, 24, landed next to the tracks along with metal wreckage of the train he’d been riding in, and instantly lost consciousness. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the twisted remains of three trains on the tracks.

His train had derailed after colliding with a stopped freight train. Another passenger train, the one he had seen pass by moments earlier, had hit the derailed carriages.

"I saw it with my own eyes, but I still can't describe what I saw. I am haunted by it," he said Sunday at a hospital, where he lay on a stretcher with a broken leg and dark wounds on his face and arms.

Read the full story:

'I am haunted by it': Survivors of deadly train crash in India recount trauma

Monday 5 June 2023 16:50 , Eleanor Noyce

An official investigation into India's deadliest rail crash in over two decades began on Monday 5 June, after preliminary findings pointed to signal failure as the likely cause for a collision that killed at least 275 people and injured over 1,000 more.

The incident happened last Friday, near the district of Balasore, in the eastern state of Odisha, and involved two passenger trains and a freight train.

Families of victims have spoken out as they continue to search for their loved ones.

"We have been searching since yesterday, we have not found him yet," Mukesh Kumar, who is looking for his brother, explained.

"I have looked for him everywhere in hospitals."

Watch:

India train crash: Families of victims speak out after collision claims 275 lives

Monday 5 June 2023 16:32 , Eleanor Noyce

A survivor of the three-train crash in the eastern state of Odisha, India on Friday has recalled the panicked scramble to escape.

25-year-old Ompal Bhatia had been travelling to Chennai with three friends for work at the time of the accident, describing his panic as he thought he was "dead."

"When the accident happened, we thought we were dead", Mr Bhatia told Reuters. "When we realised we were alive, we started making our way towards the emergency window to get out of the train. The rail car had gone off the track and had fallen to one side."

"We saw a lot of dead people. Everybody was either trying to save their lives or looking for loved ones."

Monday 5 June 2023 15:55 , Eleanor Noyce

At least 275 people were killed in a train crash in the eastern state of Odisha, India on Friday. Here, Reuters details of some of the country's deadliest rail accidents in recent decades:

June 1981: At least 800 people are killed when seven rear coaches of an overcrowded passenger train are blown off the track and fall into a river during a cyclone.

July 1988: An express train leaves the rails and plunges into a monsoon-swollen lake near Quilon in southern India, killing at least 106 people.

August 1995: At least 350 people are killed when two trains collide 200 km (125 miles) from Delhi.

August 1999: Two trains collide near Calcutta, leading to the deaths of at least 285 people.

October 2005: Several coaches of a passenger train derail in southern Andhra Pradesh state, near Velugonda. At least 77 people are killed.

July 2011: Around 70 people are killed and over 300 injured when a mail train derails in Fatehpur.

November 2016: Some 146 people are killed and more than 200 injured when an express train derails in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

January 2017: At least 41 people are killed after several coaches of a passenger train go off the rails in southern Andhra Pradesh state.

October 2018: A commuter train runs through a crowd gathered on the tracks for a festival in northern India's Amritsar city, killing at least 59 people and injuring 57.

Monday 5 June 2023 15:10 , Eleanor Noyce

A 21-year-old man who painted houses for a living and was about to get married next month is among the hundreds of people killed in one of India's deadliest train collisions in two decades.

A group of six-seven men in their early 20s were on their way to Chennai in the south of the country from Medinipur district in the eastern state of West Bengal on board the Coromandal express when the accident took place on Friday night.

Rajib Dakua, 21, who painted houses in Chennai, was among them. People from his village arrived in Odisha on Saturday and this morning were able to identify Dakua's decomposing corpse.

Families gathered in the state capital of Bhubaneshwar on Sunday to identify at least 100 bodies brought in by 50 ambulances from areas close to the crash site.

Alisha Rahaman Sarkar reports:

Man, 21, who was about to get married next month among Indian train crash dead

Monday 5 June 2023 14:35 , Eleanor Noyce

Families of the victims have spoken out as they continue to search for their loved ones.

One man has been searching for his brother since yesterday.

"I have looked for him everywhere in hospitals", Mukesh Kumar said.

More here:

Monday 5 June 2023 14:00 , Eleanor Noyce

The King has sent a message of condolence to the president of India after the country's deadliest rail disaster in decades.

Nearly 300 people died and more than 1,000 were injured when three trains collided on Friday in the state of Odisha.

Charles, who travelled to Romania last week for a private break, said he and the Queen were "most profoundly shocked and saddened" by the "dreadful accident" outside Balasore.

The King added: "I would like to express our deepest possible condolences to the families of all those who have so tragically lost their lives."

He recalled visiting Odisha as Prince of Wales, saying: "I do hope you know what a special place India and the people of India have in our hearts.

"I have particularly fond memories of visiting Odisha in 1980 and meeting some of its people on that occasion."

The King, who signed his message Charles R, told President Droupadi Murmu: "I pray, therefore, that you may be able to convey our most heartfelt prayers and sympathy to all those who have been affected by this appalling tragedy, together with our special thoughts for the people of Odisha."

Monday 5 June 2023 13:38 , Eleanor Noyce

Aerial footage captured above the scene of the deadly India train crash shows the extent of the incident that has killed almost 300 people.

Mangled and derailed train carriages are seen strewn across the ground as rescue workers continue to search the site.

Nearly 300 people have died and hundreds more were left injured after two passenger trains crashed into each other in India's eastern state of Odisha around 7pm on 2 June.

Footage from the scene shows the damaged carriages derailed and laying on their sides both near the tracks and metres away.

Watch:

Drone footage lays bare deadly devastation of India train crash

Monday 5 June 2023 12:00 , Alisha Rahaman Sarkar

One of the first responders at the site of the Odisha train crash said he rushed outside after hearing a "thunderous sound" and was left in shock by what he saw next.

Onkar Nath Panda, who lives just 50 metres away from the train tracks where the crash took place, tells The Independent that he saw a huge cloud of smoke, people screaming and everything had turned red before the police and officials arrived.

"It was like an earthquake," he says. "The only thing dividing the train track from this house is a pond.

"We rushed out. And what we saw was smoke. Everything was covered in smoke. We heard people screaming."

He said police only arrived at the scene more than an hour later, and in the meantime he and other locals jumped into action.

"I went back and took out sheets and an electrical cutter from my workshop to break open train doors. But the electricity had snapped by then.

"We tried calling for help but the lines were not working. We pulled out bodies as well as injured while the women of the house brought out buckets after buckets of water."

"Everything was red. The police and officers arrived an hour later."

Mr Panda said he hasn't slept in days and was unable to eat after witnessing such horrific scenes.

Monday 5 June 2023 11:43 , Shweta Sharma

More than three days after the deadliest train crash in India this century, the initial shock and sorrow have been overtaken by outrage and frustration as family members lined up in hospital morgues to identify and collect the bodies of their loved ones.

Family members lined up outside Bhubaneswar's AIIMS hospital where two large screens cycled through photos of the victims.

Each body had a number assigned to it, and relatives stood near the screen and watched as the photos changed, looking out for details like clothing for clues.

The distraught family members, some of whom spent days on desperate journeys from neighbouring cities and states, arrived to claim the bodies in a process that has stretched into a third day due to the nature of the injuries.

Questions are being raised over potential negligence following the emergence of a letter to the government by a top official in the Karnataka-based South Western Railway operator. The letter had flagged concerns about the danger of "signal failure", which was identified as the root cause of an accident in February as well.

The president of the opposition Congress party, Mallikarjun Kharge, asked: "Why and how could the Ministry of Railways ignore this crucial warning?"

A video going viral on social media showed people working on the crash site dumping bodies in a truck during the late night rescue and recovery operation.

"Is this Modi's New India? Where in the world this barbarity can happen? Dead bodies of train accident victims in Odisha, India, are being loaded on a tractor trolley when Modi has two big Boeings for his travels!" Ashok Swain, a Sweden-based professor and frequent critic of the Indian government, said while sharing the graphic video.

Monday 5 June 2023 11:30 , Shweta Sharma

Alaudin, who goes by one name, travelled almost 200km (124.3 miles) Saturday from West Bengal state to the crash site, to look for his brother, who was on board one of the trains.

He learned about the crash from television. When he tried to call his brother's mobile phone to check on him, no one answered, he told Associated Press.

Worried, he and his sister-in-law rushed to the site of the crash afterwards and spent all of Saturday looking for him in various hospitals, hoping he would be alive.

But his brother's whereabouts remained unknown as the death toll continued to rise.

Distraught, they finally made their way to the mortuary, where Alaudin's brother body was wrapped in a black plastic bag and placed on top of blocks of melting ice.

"I lost my brother, she lost her husband," Alaudin said, pointing to his sister-in-law. "And his two boys have lost a father."

His brother was 36 years old, Alaudin said.

Monday 5 June 2023 11:00 , Shweta Sharma

Passengers aboard a train in eastern India today watched from their windows as they passed the site of one of the country's deadliest rail crashes in decades.

The derailment that killed 275 people and injured nearly 1,200 more was caused by an error in the electronic signalling system that led a train to wrongly change tracks and crash into a freight train, officials said Sunday.

Authorities worked to clear the mangled wreckage of the two passenger trains that derailed Friday night in Balasore district in Odisha state.

Monday 5 June 2023 10:30 , Shweta Sharma

Gura Pallay was watching another train pass by the one he was sitting in when he heard sudden, loud screeching. Before he could make sense of what was happening, he was thrown out of the train.

Mr Pallay, 24, landed next to the tracks along with metal wreckage of the train he’d been riding in, and instantly lost consciousness. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the twisted remains of three trains on the tracks.

His train had derailed after colliding with a stopped freight train. Another passenger train, the one he had seen pass by moments earlier, had hit the derailed carriages.

"I saw it with my own eyes, but I still can't describe what I saw. I am haunted by it," he told the Associated Press yesterday at a hospital, where he lay on a stretcher with a broken leg and dark wounds on his face and arms.

Mr Pallay is a labourer, like most of the people onboard the two passenger trains that crashed Friday in the eastern Odisha state, killing 275 people and injuring hundreds.

He was traveling to Chennai city in southern India to take up a job in a paper mill factory when the Coromandel Express crashed with a goods freight train, knocking it off track, and was then hit by a second train coming from the opposite direction on a parallel track.

"I never imagined something like this could happen, but I guess it was our fate," he said.

Monday 5 June 2023 10:17 , Shweta Sharma

Indian Railways, the operator of the country's nationalised rail network, has initiated a comprehensive week-long safety campaign across the country to focus on the signalling system, particularly the "double locking" signalling mechanism at stations.

The drive aims to ensure the proper functioning of the signalling apparatus and the effective generation of SMS alerts whenever the signalling relay rooms are accessed and secured.

Monday 5 June 2023 10:00 , Alisha Rahaman Sarkar

At least 10 express rails have crossed the Bahanagar Bazar station where the deadly train accident occurred since the completion of the restoration.

However, the station remains closed for locals.

There is no clarity on when tickets would be issued for the local rails from the station.

Monday 5 June 2023 09:30 , Shweta Sharma

Eyewitnesses recalled "horrific and heart-wrenching" scenes after two passenger locomotives derailed in India, killing nearly 300 people and injuring hundreds more in one of the country's deadliest train crashes in decades.

The accident, which happened about 220km (137 miles) southwest of the eastern city of Kolkata on Friday night, led to a chaotic scene as rescuers climbed atop the mangled trains to break open doors and windows using cutting torches to free survivors.

"The dead bodies were lying all over the tracks, people were screaming for help. This was my worst nightmare and the images will haunt me for life," Santosh Jain, a passenger on one of the affected trains, told The Indian Express.

Eyewitnesses recall ‘horrific and heart-wrenching’ scenes after India train crash

Monday 5 June 2023 09:00 , Shweta Sharma

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge wrote a letter to prime minister Narendra Modi, asking him why a "crucial warning" about the potential for signal failure was ignored by railway officials.

In his scathing letter, the chief of the oldest Indian political party, said Odisha train accident was an "eye-opener".

"All the empty safety claims of the railway minister have now been exposed. There is serious concern among the common passengers about this deterioration in safety. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the government to ascertain and bring to light the real reasons that caused this grave accident," he said.

In one of his 11-questions that he posed to Mr Modi, he referred to a letter written by a top official in the Karnataka-based South Western Railway operator who had flagged his concerns about the danger of "signal failure", which was identified as the root cause of an accident in February as well.

"Why and how could the Ministry of Railways ignore this crucial warning?" he asked.

Monday 5 June 2023 08:34 , Alisha Rahaman Sarkar

One of the first responders at the site of the Odisha train crash said he rushed outside after hearing a "thunderous sound" and was left in shock by what he saw next.

Onkar Nath Panda, who lives just 50 metres away from the train tracks where the crash took place, tells The Independent that he saw a huge cloud of smoke, people screaming and everything had turned red before the police and officials arrived.

"It was like an earthquake," he says. "The only thing dividing the train track from this house is a pond.

"We rushed out. And what we saw was smoke. Everything was covered in smoke. We heard people screaming."

He said police only arrived at the scene more than an hour later, and in the meantime he and other locals jumped into action.

"I went back and took out sheets and an electrical cutter from my workshop to break open train doors. But the electricity had snapped by then.

"We tried calling for help but the lines were not working. We pulled out bodies as well as injured while the women of the house brought out buckets after buckets of water."

"Everything was red. The police and officers arrived an hour later."

Mr Panda said he hasn't slept in days and was unable to eat after witnessing such horrific scenes.

Monday 5 June 2023 08:28 , Shweta Sharma

Train services have resumed along the tracks in Odisha, which suffered the country's deadliest crash in more than two decades on Friday, as family members continued a desperate search for their missing loved ones.

Officials say preliminary investigations point to an error in the electronic signalling system as being the most likely cause of the crash, which killed at least 275 people and left more than 1,100 injured.

Monday 5 June 2023 08:14 , Shweta Sharma

A 21-year-old man who painted houses for a living and was about to get married next month is among the hundreds of people killed in one of India's deadliest train collisions in two decades.

A group of six-seven men in their early 20s were on their way to Chennai in the south of the country from Medinipur district in the eastern state of West Bengal on board the Coromandal express when the accident took place on Friday night.

Rajib Dakua, 21, who painted houses in Chennai, was among them. People from his village arrived in Odisha on Saturday and this morning were able to identify Dakua's decomposing corpse.

Man, 21, who was about to get married next month among Indian train crash dead

Monday 5 June 2023 08:05 , Alisha Rahaman Sarkar

Repair work at one of the tracks that suffered a deadly train crash continued after three days.

Workers were seen repairing the loop line where a freight train was stationed when a high-speed passenger train packed with people rammed into it.

Trains were resumed on two of the train tracks following 51 hours of restoration work. The resumption of the first train was overseen by railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.

Monday 5 June 2023 07:40 , Shweta Sharma

Aerial footage captured above the scene of the deadly India train crash shows the extent of the incident that has killed almost 275 people.

Mangled and derailed train carriages are seen strewn across the ground as rescue workers continued to search the site.

Monday 5 June 2023 07:00 , Shweta Sharma

A goods train has derailed in Odisha's Bargarh district, as relief and rescue work following the country's deadliest train disaster this century came to an end in Balasore in the same state.

No casualties have been reported in the incident.

The goods train was operated by a private cement company and it derailed inside the factory premises near Mendhapali.

"There is no role of Railways in this matter," operator East Coast Railway said.

The second derailment comes three days after a triple train collision left around 275 people dead and more than 1,100 people injured.

Monday 5 June 2023 06:50 , Shweta Sharma

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who is currently in the US, called out the Narendra Modi government for not taking responsibility for one of the worst disasters in the history of the Indian railways, as he suggested ministers should resign over the crash.

"I remember a train accident when the Congress was in power. The Congress did not get up and say ‘now it is the fault of the British that the train has crashed’. The Congress minister said ‘it's my responsibility and I’m resigning’. So this is the problem we have back home, we make excuses and we are not accepting the reality we are faced with," Mr Gandhi said.

Taking a potshot at Mr Modi, he said the prime minister is "incapable of looking at the future".

"He (Mr Modi) is trying to drive the car…the Indian car and he looks in the rear-view mirror. Then he does not understand why this car is crashing, not moving forward. And it's the same idea with the BJP, with the RSS. All of them," he said.

"You listen to the ministers, you listen to the prime minister. You will never find them talking about the future. They only talk about the past".

Mr Gandhi, who is on a six-day tour of three American cities, addressed a huge gathering of the Indian diaspora in the Javits Centre in New York on Sunday night.

Monday 5 June 2023 06:17 , Shweta Sharma

The driver of the passenger train Coromandel Express, Hajari Behera, remains in condition in an intensive care unit after suffering severe injuries in Friday's crash.

GN Mohanty, the assistant driver, was found conscious after the crash on Friday night and assisted railway officials in their investigation after being taken to hospital.

"He could only say that he got a green signal. After that, his condition became serious and he is now hospitalised," said railways official Jaya Varma Sinha.

A doctor said the driver remains in ICU as of Monday morning.

Monday 5 June 2023 05:55 , Shweta Sharma

The government of Odisha has released pictures of dozens of bodies of passengers who died in the train collision in Balasore.

The release of the pictures was accompanied by a disclaimer urging viewers’ discretion over the disturbing and graphic images.

"The photographs of the deceased in Balasore train accident are being posted only to facilitate identification," it said.

"Given the nature of the accident, the images posted are disturbing. It is advised that children avoid viewing these images," it added.

The images have been posted on the Odisha government's website.

The government also released pictures of unnamed people receiving treatment in various hospitals to help connect them to loved ones, as well as the names of 344 injured people currently undergoing treatment in hospitals.

Monday 5 June 2023 05:41 , Shweta Sharma

A young man in his twenties wails as he runs towards the mortuary, moments after receiving the news he had been dreading – that his brother is among the 275 victims of India‘s deadliest rail crash this century, and that now he must identify his remains.

Like many of the relatives gathering here at the largest hospital in Bhubaneswar, Sheikh Sahagir travelled for hours overnight after hearing on TV about the crash involving three trains including the Coromandel Express, which his 20-year-old brother Sheikh Sahid Alam had travelling on board.

They first made their way to the site of Friday's crash at Balasore to look for him, "but after reaching the spot we were asked to visit hospitals, and from there officials directed us to visit AIIMS [hospital]", he says. Here the stench of rotten flesh fills the air as bodies at the mortuary – which does not have refrigeration – begin to decompose in the sweltering heat.

The Independent's Alisha Rahaman Sarkar reports from the site of the horrific crash.

Train crash survivor: ‘Suddenly everything went silent. And then there were screams’

Monday 5 June 2023 05:30 , Shweta Sharma

The train crash in eastern India that killed 275 people and injured around 1200 passengers in a collision between two passengers and a freight train was caused by an error in the electronic signalling system.

Incorrect signalling caused one of the high-speed passenger trains to divert onto the wrong track and collide with the stationary freight train, before another high-speed passenger train on an adjacent track hit the derailed coaches of the first train, according to officials.

Jaya Verma Sinha, a senior railway official, said the preliminary investigations revealed that a signal was given to the high-speed Coromandel Express to run on the main track line, but the signal later changed, and the train instead entered an adjacent loop line where it rammed into a freight loaded with iron ore.

The collision flipped Coromandel Express's coaches onto another track, causing the incoming Yesvantpur-Howrah Express from the opposite side also to derail, she said.

The passenger trains, carrying 2,296 people in all, were not excessively speeding, she said. Trains that carry goods are often parked on an adjacent loop line so the main line is clear for a passing train.

Ms Verma said the root cause of the crash was related to an error in the electronic signalling system and a detailed investigation will reveal whether the error was human or technical.

Monday 5 June 2023 05:05 , Shweta Sharma

Indian railways resumed passenger train services on the tracks that saw the deadliest train accident since the 1980s.

After more than 51 hours, the first train after the accident in Balasore, Odisha, kicked off its journey at around 10.40pm on Sunday, in a resumption of services overseen by railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and scores of people.

"Down-line restoration complete. First train movement in section," Mr Vaishnaw tweeted.

Despite restorations, two trains stood cancelled due to "non-availability of rake", according to latest bulletin by railways. Rake refers to the coupled coaches of a train, not including the engine.

Authorities said the resumption of services was the result of work on a "war footing" by 1,000 workers and railway officials through Saturday night and Sunday.

The mangled wreckage of the tree trains that collided on Friday evening was cleared after the dead bodies were removed and passengers were rescued to ready the tracks for a trial run.

"The way the prime minister came to this site and led us, inspired the team, it strengthened the team and they worked day and night on a war footing to restore the system in 51 hours. As you saw, three trains have gone and seven are planned in total tonight. We have to take it towards normalisation," the minister said.

"With full sympathy, those who lost their loved ones, we have to make sure their bodies reach them. Our obligation towards them is not over."

Monday 5 June 2023 04:14 , Shweta Sharma

Welcome to The Independent's live coverage of the train crash in Odisha, India on Monday