DATIYA, India, 4 October 2005 — At least 18 people were killed and scores injured yesterday when a speeding passenger train derailed and slammed into a brick cabin at a railway station in central India, police and railway spokesmen said.
“Eighteen bodies have been brought out and further rescue operations are being carried out,” police Superintendent R.P. Srivastava said by telephone from the scene of the accident.
The Bundelkhand Express jumped the tracks and slammed into a railway signal cabin at Datiya, 280 km north of Bhopal in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, said Indian Railways spokesman Rajiv Saxena. The train was bound for Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh state from the city of Varanasi in neighboring Uttar Pradesh state.
Railways Minister Lalu Prasad said that according to preliminary information the train took a bend leading to the station platform too fast and derailed at 8.59 a.m.
Roadside tea-stall owner Navneet Trivedi said the train approached the bend faster than normal.
“I was shocked at its speed and then I heard a deafening sound and then a blinding haze of dust and debris engulfed the station,” Trivedi, covered with layers of soot, told an AFP correspondent at the crash site. “There was this sound of steel-on-steel and then came the screams.”
Trivedi said one of the six derailed carriages flew off the tracks and hit the cabin with such force that the two-story brick structure collapsed.
The engine driver and his helper were among those killed.
A police officer said the train had been due to stop at the station but sped through and jumped the tracks in an area where coaches are serviced and cleaned. “We suspect the brakes of the train failed,” he added.
Rescue efforts continued in the afternoon with heavy equipment being brought in to help pry the cars apart, a railways official said.
“Local residents have joined in the rescue and relief operations and senior railway and district officials have also reached the spot to oversee relief and rescue operations,” said P.D. Meena, a senior railways official based in Bhopal.
Officials said they expect to find more bodies in the wreckage.
“Casualty figures will increase as we find more bodies which are believed to be stuck between (crushed) carriages or in their mangled seats,” Vagesh Pandey, another railways spokesman, said from the scene of the accident.
Vinod Shukla, a passenger traveling to Gwalior who was sleeping when the train crashed, said scores had been injured. “There were a lot of people injured, I think more than 100 people are injured in the accident,” Shukla said.
Railways Minister Lalu announced cash payouts for families of the dead and said the injured would be treated free of charge. “Accidents happen, but their numbers are now going down,” Lalu said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed shock and grief and offered condolences to the relatives of those who died.
State-run Indian Railways transports more than 13 million passengers daily on networks that sprawl 108,700 km across the nation with a population of more than one billion.
Some 300 accidents are recorded every year, some of which result in hundreds of deaths.
Mohammed Sohail, of the consumer rights association of Gwalior, said his group had warned Indian Railways about dangerous conditions at the station where the accident occurred.
“We hold the railways responsible for this criminal and negligent act because in the past we had tried to highlight the poor operating conditions at Datiya station,” Sohail said, adding that infrastructure at the station was poorly maintained.
Lalu was attacked by an angry mob while visiting the site of a train wreck in April that killed 17 people and injured 150 after a passenger train rammed into a freight train in the western state of Gujarat.
Opposition politicians called for his resignation in December after a head-on train collision in the northern state of Punjab caused by a signaling error killed 38 people and injured 52.
