Indian rescue workers completed operations on Sunday after the country's deadliest rail crash in more than two decades, with signal failure emerging as the likely cause of an accident that killed at least 275 people.
The death toll from Friday's crash was revised down from 288 after it was found that some bodies had been counted twice, said Pradeep Jena, chief secretary of the Odisha state. The tally was unlikely to rise, he told reporters. "Now the rescue operation is complete."
Nearly 1,200 people were injured when a passenger train hit a stationary freight train, jumped the tracks and hit another passenger train passing in the opposite direction near the district of Balasore.
More than 900 people had been discharged from hospital while 260 were still being treated, with one patient in critical condition, the Odisha state government said.
State-run Indian Railways, which says it transports more than 13 million people every day, has been working to improve its patchy safety record, blamed on ageing infrastructure, and is conducting an initial inquiry to determine the cause of the crash.
Cause of the train crash
Preliminary investigations indicated the Coromandel Express, heading to Chennai from Kolkata, moved out of the main track and entered a loop track at 128 kph, crashing into the freight train parked on the loop track, said Railway Board member Jaya Varma Sinha.
That crash caused the engine and first four or five coaches of the Coromandel Express to jump the tracks, topple and hit the last two coaches of the Yeshwantpur-Howrah train heading in the opposite direction at 126 kph on the second main track, she told reporters.
This caused those two coaches to jump the tracks and result in the massive pileup, Sinha said, adding that the drivers of both passenger trains were injured but survived.
The probe is now focused on the computer-controlled track management system, called the “interlocking system”, which directs a train to an empty track at the point where two tracks meet.
The system is suspected to have malfunctioned and should not have allowed the Coromandel Express to take the loop track, Sinha said.
Workers with heavy machinery were clearing the damaged track, wrecked trains and electric cables, as distraught relatives looked on.
The Balasore disaster occurred last Friday evening near Odisha’s Balasore. Several coaches of an express train bound for Chennai derailed for the reasons that are not yet clear, and crashed into a freight train standing on a parallel track. The collision caused many of the coaches to overturn. Soon after, an oncoming passenger train dashed into the derailed coaches.
