Traffic resumed, three days later one of India’s worst rail disasters. Passenger and freight trains resumed operations on Monday. The cause of a collision between three trains on Friday night near Balasore, in the eastern state of Odisha, which killed nearly 300 people and injured more than a thousand, has been identified by authorities as linked to a problem in the referral system.
The authorities first announced death toll 288, but the Odisha state government has since revised the figure to 275 dead, with some bodies being incorrectly counted twice. Of the 1,175 people injured, 382 were still being treated in hospital, authorities said Sunday. Fears that the death toll could rise remain high as medical centers are overwhelmed with injured people, many in serious condition.
“No one responsible” for the accident will survive, India’s Prime Minister vowed on Saturday, Narendra Modi, who went to the disaster site and met the injured in the hospital. Since the disaster, large green nets have been laid along the tracks, hiding the broken carcasses of the wagons, pushed aside.
Resumption of traffic 51 hours after the accident
On Sunday, India’s Minister of Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw said the “causes of the accident and those responsible” had been identified. He has determined that “the changes that occur during electronic referral are the origin of the accident”.
The minister watched, hands clasped in prayer, as the first coal-laden train passed the disaster site late Sunday, 51 hours after the crash. The first conclusions of the investigation have not yet been published, but every day Indian Timeciting a preliminary investigative report, saying Sunday that “human error” in signaling may have caused the collision.
At this stage, this train accident is India’s deadliest since the collision of two passenger trains on 2 August 1999 at Gaisal station in West Bengal, which killed 285 people.
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