PM Modi to visit site of train accident in Odisha as toll nears 300
NEW DELHI,JUNE 3 :Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Saturday visit Odisha’s Balasore, where the horrific train accident claimed the lives of nearly 300 people and left more than 900 injured.
According to the details, the prime minister will first visit the site of the train accident and will then visit the hospital in Cuttack, where the injured have been admitted.
Earlier today, the prime minister also convened a meeting to review the situation in relation to the Odisha train accident, government sources told PTI.
Meanwhile, the railways today said the rescue operations at the accident site were over.
The train crash, the fourth deadliest in India according to available records, happened near the Bahanaga Baazar station in Balasore district, about 250 km south of Kolkata and 170 km north of Bhubaneswar, around 7 pm on Friday, prompting the Railway Ministry to order a probe.
The inquiry into the train accident will be led by AM Chowdhary, Commissioner Railway Safety, South East Circle, the Indian Railways said in a statement. The Commissioner Railway Safety comes under the Ministry of Civil Aviation.
Several coaches of the 12864 Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express, on the way to Howrah, derailed and fell on adjacent tracks, an official said.
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A goods train was also involved in the accident as some of the coaches of the Coromandel Express, which was heading to Chennai, hit its wagons after getting derailed.
Gas cutters were used to extricate the bodies from under the derailed coaches. Disaster management personnel and firemen were also drawn in to extricate bodies.
Railway tracks were almost destroyed at the spot as mangled coaches lay strewn all over, with some having mounted on another, while a few coaches turned turtle due to the impact.
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Pijush Poddar, a resident of Berhampore in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district, was travelling to Tamil Nadu on the Coromandel Express to join work there when the accident happened.
“We were jolted and suddenly saw the train bogie turn to one side. Many of us were thrown out of the compartment by the momentum of the derailment. When we managed to crawl out, we found bodies lying all around,” he told PTI.
Locals said they heard consecutive loud sounds, following which they rushed to the spot and found the derailed coaches, which were nothing but “a mangled heap of steel”.
“The local people really went out on a limb to help us… They not only helped in pulling out people but retrieved our luggage and got us water, ” Rupam Banerjee, one of the passengers, told reporters.
One of the coaches “was pushed into the ground ” as another from a neighbouring train collapsed on top of it, passengers said.
Balasore district hospital looked like a war zone with the injured lying on stretchers in the corridor and rooms bursting at its seams with extra beds propped up.
-PTI
