NEW DELHI, 17 December 2004 — Police yesterday arrested one of two station masters who fled after being blamed for a head-on train collision that killed 38 people and injured 52.

The police have filed a complaint of culpable homicide not amounting to murder against the two railway officials working at the stations from where the trains departed moments before the crash. One is still on the run.

Railway officials said Tuesday’s accident was the result of a signaling fault that allowed the trains onto a single track. They collided in the northern state of Punjab, 150 km east of Amritsar.

But newspapers said signaling equipment at the two stations from which the trains departed had broken down a day before the accident, forcing officials to use other means to communicate.

They said the breakdown was symptomatic of years of neglect by successive governments of one of the world’s largest railway networks.

“Once again it has taken loss of human life ... in a completely preventable train collision to expose the Indian Railways’ failure to upgrade basic infrastructure,” said The Indian Express.

Police had raided the homes of the two station masters but they had already fled.

Ram Lal was arrested in his home town in Himachal Pradesh, the Press Trust of India reported. The other station master has yet to be traced.

Opposition lawmakers, bellowing “Shame, shame!” stormed out of Parliament for a second day to protest at Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav’s handling of the crash that sent half a dozen carriages hurtling off the tracks.

MPs were angered by his failure to attend Parliament on Wednesday, the day after the collision, to brief lawmakers about the accident.

Lalu had been attending a political rally in Bihar where key elections are due early next year.

“He rushed to a political rally rather ... than coming to Parliament,” said Vijay Kumar Malhotra, spokesman of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.

He said the lawmakers staged the walkout “to protest this kind of behavior.”

Lalu apologized for his absence and blamed the accident on the two station masters.

“One station master has to seek clearance from the other before letting a train pass. This communication didn’t happen properly. That’s why the accident occurred,” he said.

Chatterjee Threatens to Quit

Meanwhile, Parliament Speaker Somnath Chatterjee threatened to resign, saying some members’ accusations that he was behaving like a “dictator” had caused him agony.

“If members are not happy with the present incumbent, I shall have no regrets in leaving it. I was happier facing the chair than occupying it,” he told a stunned lower house.

His threat to resign came after BJP members accused him of “behaving like a dictator.”

The accusations came during a day of tumult on Wednesday when opposition lawmakers forced the house to adjourn to protest the government’s handling of the train accident.

Chatterjee, a senior leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), took over as speaker at the behest of the ruling Congress Party which came to power in May.

He said “the chair does not have any prestige any longer and has become totally irrelevant and it has become a matter of agony for me to occupy this chair, which I never expected to do, far less solicited.”

After making his resignation offer, he did not raise the subject again and with a poker face carried on with the day’s proceedings.

There was no immediate reaction to his offer to resign.

He has often tried in vain to subdue unruly lawmakers.

— With input from AFP