This coming June 6 marks the 42nd anniversary of the deadliest railway accident in India’s history. On that day in 1981, some 800 people died. when seven carriages of a train plunged from a bridge into the Bagmat River, in the east of the country.
(Read also: The shocking images of the accident between three trains in India)
Last Friday, 275 people were killed when three trains, including the Coromandel Express, collided with two more. The number of deaths was rectified by the authorities, who reported 288 deaths to Saturday. The number of wounded exceeds a thousand.
The Indian railway network is, with a length of 68,000 kilometers, the fourth by length in the worldbehind the United States, Russia and China, has some 21,650 trains and 7,349 stations throughout the country, and transports some 23 million passengers daily.
Being so extensive, accidents are constant, lack of investment and mechanical damage are the main causes. In this new accident, the government established that there was a malfunction in the electronic signaling system, but without giving further details.
Journalists at the scene reported that the Coromandel Express collided with a freight train. Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Transport, assured that they would find out “who did it and how the accident happened after an investigation.”
The Times of India newspaper, citing a preliminary investigation, said a “human error” could be the cause. The Coromandel – which connected Calcutta with Chennai – had been given the green light to run on the main track but was mistakenly diverted onto a track where a freight train was stopped.
The passenger convoy collided with this second train at a speed of 130 km/h. Three carriages were left lying on the adjacent track, hitting the rear of a passenger express from Bangalore to Calcutta. This second collision is the one that caused the most damage, notes The Times of India.
(You may be interested in: Pope Francis’ request for the victims of the tragic train accident in India)
According to the latest report from India’s National Crime Recording Bureau (NCRB), there were 13,018 accidents in 2020, killing 11,986 people and injuring 11,127 others, with collisions being the cause of 70 percent of the claims.
lack of investment
The lack of real investment and the aging of the system weigh on the reality demonstrated by the number of deaths and accidents. The figures are alarming, for example in the Bombay network, 18,847 people died from 2013 to 2015. And from 2015 to 2018, 49,800 died. All these data were offered by the police and registered in the media of that country.
A few years ago, India planned to build 3,000 kilometers of walls along railways and railways to reduce accidents. The cost of the work was 2,500 million rupees or 30 million euros.
The train and railway network is at least 170 years old and has losses of 4.5 million dollars a year due to subsidies in passenger fares according to Global Voices, so it is not sustainable.
accident record
This list is of the worst train accidents in India collected by the newspaper La Vanguardia.
-6 June 1981: 800 dead in Bagmat.
– July 8, 1988: 134 dead by derailment in the south of the country.
– April 16, 1990: About 100 dead after burning two wagons in Patna.
– November 1, 1992: More than 150 deaths in a collision between an express and a freight train in Reti.
– August 20, 1995: 355 dead in the collision of two trains in Firozabad, near the Taj Majal.
– August 2, 1999: 288 dead in a head-on collision between two trains in Gaisal.
– September 9, 2002: At least 118 dead when a train derailed in the north.
– October 29, 2005.- 130 dead when derailing in Andhra Pradesh.
– May 28, 2010: 145 dead when the Calcutta-Bombay express train derailed and collided with a freight train, in the state of Bengal.
– November 20, 2016: 116 dead and 120 injured when 14 carriages of a moving train derailed in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
ANA RODRIGUEZ BRAZON
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
With information from Efe, Afp
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