Monday 19th July, 04:25 PM JST
CALCUTTA, India —
A speeding express train collided with a stationary passenger train
at a station in eastern India early Monday, mangling the carriages
and killing 56 people, railway police said.
Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee raised the possibility the crash
could have been another case of sabotage, two months after Maoist
rebels were blamed for a derailment that killed 145 people.
Banerjee said she and top officials were rushing to the scene to
investigate. “We have some doubts in our mind,” she said.
The crash happened about 2 a.m. when the Uttarbanga Express slammed
into the Vananchal Express as it left the platform at Sainthia
station, about 200 kilometers north of Calcutta.
The collision destroyed two passenger cars and a luggage car,
turning them into a tangle of twisted metal. The passenger cars
were reserved for those on the cheapest tickets and such carriages
are usually packed to capacity.
The force of the crash was so intense the roof of one car flew into
the air and landed on an overpass above the tracks. Local residents
climbing through the debris searching for survivors were later
joined by rescue workers using heavy equipment to cut through the
metal.
Rescuers recovered 56 bodies from the crash site and 125 other
people were injured, said Surajit Kaur Purkayastha, a top police
official. The two drivers of the Uttarbanga Express were among the
dead, Banerjee said.
Rescue teams arrived about three hours after the accident, local
resident said. Before that locals scrambled to help survivors out
of the trains and to pull out bodies.
“For many hours it was just the local residents helping and it was
very difficult to help without any equipment,” the unidentified man
told NDTV television channel.
Police official Humayun Kabir told NDTV, however, rescue workers
reached the site within an hour of the crash.
Bhupinder Singh, the top police official in West Bengal, said the
death toll could rise. He said it was too early to know how many
people remained inside the coaches.
India’s federal Home Ministry rushed several hundred members of the
National Disaster Relief Force to the accident site to assist with
search-and-rescue operations, a government statement said.
The disaster was the second major train crash in the state of West
Bengal in the past two months. On May 28, a passenger train
derailed and was hit by an oncoming cargo train in a crash that
killed 145 people. Authorities blamed sabotage by Maoist rebels for
that crash.
Accidents are common on India’s sprawling rail network, one of the
world’s largest, with most blamed on poor maintenance.
