Four killed and 30 injured in train crash in Bihar, says Railways

Second major rail accident in 4 months, Commissioner of Railway Safety to conduct probe

Defects in tracks may have caused the derailment of the Anand Vihar-Kamakhya North East Express, resulting in the deaths of four persons and injuries to at least 30 on Wednesday night, a prima facie statement by involved stakeholders suggests.
 

“The loco pilot, who was injured, had to apply the emergency brakes at 128 km per hour (kmph) after the train had a severe jolt shortly after passing Raghunathpur station,” a source with access to the prima facie report told Business Standard.
 

Officials said the gateman and pointsman at the station heard loud sounds and saw sparks as the train passed through the Raghunathpur area, the site of the accident. Immediately after that several coaches of the train veered off the track.
 

 

Officials at the Railway Board said it was an initial statement and not an investigation report. 
 

The East Central Railway, the zonal railway administering the area, on Thursday said the commissioner of railway safety (eastern circle) would investigate the matter.
 

Sources aware of the accident said six to seven coaches of the train had passed the faulty track, after which pressure might have caused the track to deform further and that’s how the rest of the coaches were derailed.
 

Twenty-one coaches were derailed and the rails were also found to be broken, according to sources. 
 

Restoration work at the site is underway as of Thursday evening.
 

An ex-gratia of Rs 10 lakh has been provided to the kin of the deceased, and Rs 50,000 has been given to each of the injured.
 

The zonal railway said 95 trains had been diverted, 31 cancelled, five short-terminated, and two passenger trains rescheduled on the Patna-Mughalsarai (Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction) section.
 

This is the second major rail accident in four months, and is increasingly becoming a matter of concern, despite record funds being allocated to the railways for safety.
 

“The accountability of the railway ministry and central government should be fixed,” Mallikarjun Kharge, president of the Congress, wrote on social media.
 

A former general manager of the East Central Railway told Business Standard the accident underscored the need for an overhaul in the safety apparatus of the national transporter.
 

As many as 293 people died in the June 2 accident in Odisha’s Balasore district in a collision involving three trains. 

The Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express, Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express, and a stationary goods train were tangled in the smash-up.
 

Safety initiatives by the railways are failing to show results owing to poor implementation, according to experts.
 

With two accidents being reported on account of technical faults not caught earlier, the railways has also been trying to implement an advance maintenance planning system (rolling block), but many officials have said that in several zones, the system is being implemented only in name, and the latest accident is evidence of that.
 

Business Standard had earlier reported that in July, the Railway Board had to send an advisory to all divisions to send their rolling block plans because a number of divisions had either sent deficient advance maintenance plans or no plans at all.