At least four people were killed and around 100 injured when the Assam-bound North East Express from Delhi jumped tracks near Raghunathpur railway station in Buxar district of Bihar on Wednesday night, Bihar officials said.
“The entire train has been derailed. Four to five coaches have overturned completely; three of them are severely damaged,” Buxar district magistrate Anshul Agarwal said.
“Four bodies have been extricated. Around 80 to 100 people are injured. Around 15 to 20 seriously injured people have been sent in ambulances to AIIMS Patna.”
The dead include Abu Zayed, a young man from Saptia Bhandarpur village in Kishanganj district of Bihar; and Usha Bhandari and her eight-year-old daughter Akriti Bhandari from Mehrauli in Delhi. The fourth deceased has been identified as Narendra; news agency PTI said he was from Rajasthan. All the dead were on coach B7.
Zayed’s cousin Muhammad Nasir, who too was on the train, said: “We had just finished dinner and were trying to sleep when we were thrown off our berths. The coach had overturned. I started looking for my cousin and found him dead.”
East Central Railway (ECR) officials said the train jumped tracks at 9.35pm. ECR chief public relations officer Virendra Kumar said 5 passengers were seriously injured and 25 others suffered simple injuries, giving figures far lower than the state government’s.
Rescue efforts
Local people said they rushed to the site after hearing a loud noise. They started pulling out the injured and helped some of them to the primary health centre (PHC) at Raghunathpur, earning praise from the district magistrate.
The district administration, police, National Disaster Response Force and the State Disaster Response Force were involved in the rescue and relief operations.
Train services on the extremely busy Patna-Delhi route were disrupted. Cranes and other heavy equipment were brought in to clear the tracks.
Railway minister Ashwini Vaishnav said a probe would be conducted to “find the root cause of the derailment”. The Calcutta-based railway safety commissioner (eastern circle) will investigate the accident.
‘Fault in tracks’
PTI quoted railway sources as saying, on the basis of a preliminary investigation report, that a fault in the tracks may have caused the derailment. “It seems that derailment occurred due to fault in tracks,” the report, signed by six railway officials, said.
According to PTI, the report contains a statement from loco pilot Vipin Kumar Sinha, who suffered minor injuries, that the train passed Raghunathpur station at 128kmph and soon after suffered a severe jolt at the rear end with excessive vibration.
As a result, Sinha said, the brake pipe pressure dropped suddenly and the train got derailed, PTI added, citing the report.