61 killed in Indian train crash

A speeding express rammed into the back of a stationary passenger train in eastern India yesterday, killing more than 60 people and leaving 165 injured, many seriously.

The standing train was waiting to leave Sainthia station in Birbhum district, 260 kilometres north of the West Bengal state capital Kolkata, when the express train crashed into it in the early hours of yesterday.

Bodies and injured travellers were pulled from the mangled mass of steel by emergency services and by onlookers who had massed at the site of the accident, the second train disaster in West Bengal in less than two months.

Railways Minister Mamata Banerjee and railway board chairman Vivek Sahai refused to rule out sabotage, but West Bengal Civil Defence Minister Srikumar Mukherjee said there was no evidence of foul play.

“It’s not an act of sabotage. The tragic accident took place because of negligence on the part of the railway administration,” Mr Mukherjee said at the crash site.

Mr Mukherjee said a total of 61 people had been killed and 165 injured, 89 of them seriously.

“The train was running at unexpectedly high speed,” railway board chairman Sahai told reporters.

He said “human error could be the cause of the accident” but added he was puzzled about why the driver had not applied the brakes “even though he was very experienced” and had ignored the signalling system. The force of the impact hurled one wagon onto an overhead passenger bridge.

Local hospitals found themselves overwhelmed by the number of victims.

“There were injured passengers writhing in pain on the floor of the emergency room unattended,” Samir Nandy, who had come to look for his brother-in-law, said. In May, nearly 150 people were killed when a Mumbai-bound high-speed passenger express from Kolkata veered off the tracks into the path of an oncoming freight train.

Police officials said a section of the track had been deliberately removed and blamed Maoist rebels active in the state.

At the moment of yesterday’s impact, passengers recounted experiencing a violent smash before panic erupted.

“I was fast asleep on the top berth when there was this huge crash like an explosion,” one passenger told Times Now news channel. “I was flung from the berth and then people started shouting.”

Another survivor, Rajni Dhar, said she heard a loud bang and then blacked out.

“When I regained consciousness, I screamed for help and was pulled out of the train compartment,” she said.