Indian authorities said initial findings showed a signal failure led to a train accident on Friday that killed nearly 300 people and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has vowed to punish those responsible.
Indian Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Sunday that the government had “identified the cause of the accident and those responsible”. Early findings suggested that a malfunction in the “electronic interlock” system that controls train movement led to the three-way collision near Balasore station in the eastern state of Odisha.
A fast-moving passenger train, the southbound Coromandel Express, received a false signal and moved onto an alternate track, where it crashed into a stationary freight train, according to government reports. A third passenger train traveling north then hit the derailed carriage.
The accident killed at least 288 people and injured more than 800, making it India’s worst railway accident in more than two decades.
“The government will spare no effort to treat the injured,” Modi said during a tour of the site on Saturday. “Those found guilty will be severely punished.”
Several opposition leaders blamed Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party for the accident, accused the government of neglecting investment in the region’s rail safety and called for Vaishnaw’s resignation. The minister shrugged off the demands, saying he was focused on disaster relief and that “this is not the time for politics”.
Modi has prioritized upgrading the country’s sprawling rail network, parts of which are outdated. The system dates back to the 19th century and plays a vital role in the movement of people and goods across the country of 1.4 billion people.
Before the accident, Modi was due to launch a new express train in western India on Saturday. However, the automatic safety system introduced last year to prevent collisions has yet to be implemented on the eastern India route where Friday’s accident happened.
The country has had to deal with a series of horrific train accidents. Friday’s crash was the deadliest since 1995, when more than 350 people were killed in a car accident in the Uttar Pradesh state of Uttar Pradesh. In 2016, a train derailment in the same state killed more than 150 people.
A government study found that the number of accidents has dropped from more than 800 a year in the early 1970s to 22 in 2021. According to the Comptroller and Auditor’s rail safety audit last year, the most common cause of recent accidents was train derailments. Spending on track renewal has fallen since 2017, the Indian general added.
Friday’s trains were full of migrant workers and their families traveling between their homes in eastern states such as West Bengal and relatively prosperous southern cities such as Chennai and Bengaluru, where many traveled in search of work.
“I still can’t believe I survived,” passenger Brahma Das told the Times of India. “I had to climb over the bloodied body of a passenger to get out of the train in the dark. I couldn’t see anything. There was smoke all around.”
Hundreds of rescue workers, volunteers and military personnel worked in temperatures of at least 35C over the weekend to evacuate the wounded and clear traces of debris. With hospitals and morgues overwhelmed, nearly 200 bodies were taken to a nearby school where relatives from across India gathered to search for missing relatives.
“The body has started to decompose under the heat,” Chothuram Choudhury, who came to the school from West Bengal in search of two relatives who had gone to work in Chennai, told The Indian Express. “A lot of faces are unrecognizable . . . I don’t know what I’m going to say at home.”