Diksia.com - NEW DELHI, Indian police have arrested three men in connection with a three-train collision last month that killed nearly 300 people.
This is one of the worst train accidents in the country’s history.
Quoted from Channel News Asia page on Sunday (07/09/2023): Last June, a train crash occurred in the eastern state of Odisha when an overcrowded passenger train was accidentally diverted onto a circular track.
Until it finally crashed into a stationary freight train loaded with iron ore.
The derailed compartment then struck the carriage of another express train, the Howrah Superfast Express from Bengaluru, which was traveling in the opposite direction.
“As a result of this unfortunate event, three railroad employees have been charged with negligent homicide and destruction of evidence in the lawsuit filed against them last Thursday,” the Central Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.
The statement simply identified the suspects as two signal engineers and a technician working for Indian Railways, without giving further details.
The two passenger trains were carrying more than 2,000 passengers at the time of the collision.
The carriage had completely overturned and rescue workers were struggling to extricate the survivors who were trapped in the rubble and whose bodies lay beside the tracks.
Relatives spent days searching property and looking at autopsy photos of those killed in the crash to identify their loved ones.
At least 850 other people were injured in the clash.
Days after the accident, Indian Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the accident was caused by a signal problem and “the person responsible for the accident” has now been identified.
However, he did not provide further details at the time and said he did not want to forestall a government investigation into the disaster.
Train service resumed 51 hours after the fatal accident, and Vaishnaw folded his hands in prayer as he watched the first train cross the crash site.
Indian Railways, the fourth largest rail network in the world, operates approximately 14,000 trains a day with 8,000 locomotives on an extensive rail network of approximately 64,000 kilometers (km).
According to official figures, the network, which is currently under enormous pressure, carries more than 21 million passengers a day in the world’s most populous country.
India has invested enormous sums in recent years to go beyond simply modernizing its rail network.
But express trains are also operated, modern train stations are built, new rails are laid and electronic signaling systems are installed.
Last June’s accident was India’s third worst and deadliest accident since 1995, when 300 people died after two high-speed trains collided near Agra, where the Taj Mahal is being built.
