Passengers who escaped the blasts on Guwahati Express at the Chennai Central Railway Station on Thursday said they heard a sound twice after ten minutes after the train came to a halt on Platform No. 9.
“Just a few minutes before the blast, we came out of S-5 bogie. I went to S-6 bogie in which my friends were accommodated. It is our luck that we survived the tragedy,” Parvathaneni Chandrashekar, a software engineer, said.
Most passengers on the train were software engineers working with various firms in Chennai and Bangalore. They were returning to their native places in Guntur, Vijayawada and East and West Godavari districts for week-end holidays.
“I reached Chennai Railway Station at 7 a.m. on Thursday. I got a berth in S-5, but two of my friends – Srikanth and Suryakanth – from Vijayawada got berths in S-6. I just got down and went to S-6 to enquire about their seating position, and immediately there was a huge sound from S-5 coach. Before we could make out what had happened, another blast occurred,” recalled Chandrashekar, a native of Lodida Lanka village of Kalidindi mandal in Krishna district.
Chandrashekar works with Cognizant Technology Solutions, Chennai, and was returning home to look after his wife, who had delivered a baby recently. After the blast, Chandrashekar cancelled his journey.
Another passenger, V. Sujatha, a software engineer working with Capgemini Technology in Chennai, recalled how she escaped the blast.
“I boarded Guwahati Express from K.R. Puram Station in Bangalore at 12 a.m. on Wednesday night. When the train reached Chennai station, I heard a big sound. Passengers screamed for help and ran out of the bogies. Later, I went to Nellore by road, and I was waiting for a bus to Vijayawada,” said Ms. Sujatha, a native of Gollapudi in Vijayawada.
M. Ramesh, a third year B.Tech student of Nick College of Technology, Kanchikacherla, Krishna district, had gone to Bangalore to bring his cousin, Sujatha, to Vijayawada. She is a software engineer at Hosur in Tamil Nadu. “As May Day is a holiday, I applied for leave on Friday, as the next two days are holidays. We were returning to Vijayawada,” said Sujatha.
