KARACHI, 15 July 2005 — Police have registered a case in connection with the Ghotki train disaster as relatives desperately sought news of their loved ones yesterday. Railway police officer Shafi Mohammad Mughal said nobody has been charged in the case and investigations are under way.
He said Pakistan Railways have informed the police that the driver of the Karachi Express violated the signal. “But anything concrete in this regard can only be said after the completion of the investigations,” Mughal said.
Meanwhile, medical workers struggled to identify mangled corpses a day after around 150 people died in Pakistan’s worst train crash in 15 years. Stations across the country were full of people frantically searching victim lists posted by the authorities after the three-train pileup early Wednesday near the southern town of Ghotki.
Thousands of others traveling in buses, trains and trucks flocked to hospitals near the crash site, where for some, severed body parts held the answer they had been dreading.
“I can recognize his feet and hands,” said a sobbing Allah Ditta, who came to Ghotki hospital from Bahawalpur, a town in central Punjab province, to search for his missing brother.
A senior rail official had said on Wednesday that 150 people had died, while doctors at the hospital said 164 people were killed. A Pakistan Railways press release would only confirm 138 deaths.
Officials said they were trying to identify nearly 100 unclaimed bodies, which lay shrouded by white sheets in the courtyard of the small government hospital nearly 36 hours after the collision.
Ice blocks and fans were used to cool the bodies because of the lack of a mortuary.
“We have so far handed 37 bodies to their relatives but 96 bodies are still lying at the hospital as their identification has not yet been established,” Mughal said.
— With input from agencies
