Cause and ‘people responsible’ for India train crash that killed hundreds have been identified, rail minister says
Rescue efforts concluded and the overturned train cars were cleared from the tracks in Balasore, eastern Odisha state, on Sunday, as authorities rush to resume rail services after one of the deadliest train disasters in the country’s history, CNN reports.
At least 275 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured in what officials have described as a three-way crash involving two passenger trains and a stationary freight train on Friday evening. The toll was revised down from at least 288 after officials said some of the bodies at the scene had been counted twice in the chaos of the wreckage.
Authorities were examining whether a failure in signaling – the result of either a technical malfunction or human error – had led to the crash. India’s railways minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said on Sunday that the accident had occurred “due to a change in electronic interlocking” and that an investigation would show “who was responsible for that mistake.”
“The cause has been identified and the people responsible for it have been identified,” he told Indian news agency ANI, declining to give further details until the government report is released.
According to senior railway officials, the Coromandel Express, a high-speed train traveling from Kolkata to Chennai, was diverted onto a loop line and slammed into a heavy goods train idled at a station, Bahanaga Bazar. Its carriages derailed onto the opposite track, where they were hit by an oncoming high speed train, the Howrah Express, which was traveling from Bangalore.
