Twelve hours after the eight train passengers were crushed to death by the Rayagada-Vijayawada passenger train at Gotlam, some curious visitors to the spot found pieces of human flesh lying scattered.
Minutes after the incident, the news spread like wild fire. Collector Kantilal Dande, Superintendent of Police Tafseer Iqbal, Joint Collector P.A. Sobha and RDO Venkata Rao rushed to the spot with mobile medical teams and offered assistance.
Some of the passengers who were witness to the incident informed them that an unidentified passenger in Bokaro Express pulled the alarm chain after rumours about billowing smoke from S-1 and S-2 coaches of the train.
A number of passengers from the general compartment jumped out in a hurry on to the adjacent railway track. At the same moment, the Rayagada-Vijayawada Fast Passenger was hurtling down on the track leaving no scope for four men, three women and a child, to escape.
The track from the nearby level crossing up to a little beyond signals post is sharply curved. No object, including the signal light on the Rayagada-Vijayawada track, is visible, even during daytime. A points’ man at Gotlam East Cabin confirmed invisibility of the signal post.
Karu Pasi (49), worker in an iron and steel factory in Coimbatore, who was being treated for a fractured left leg at the district headquarters hospital, was on way to his native village Baranama in Nevada district of Bihar. He fell unconscious after he hit a stone and fractured his leg in the darkness. Rajesh Yadav, his co-passenger, who hails from Bihar, came to his rescue and is attending on him at the hospital. Mr. Yadav said he could not come out of the packed general compartment of the express train and it saved him.
The orthopaedic attending on him said he would be shifted to the K.G.H in Visakhapatnam after his family members arrived at the hospital because an operation was to be performed.
TDP leaders P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju, D. Jagadish, and others called on Karu Pasi at the hospital and enquired about the incident this morning.
The railway officials cleared the track after 10 p.m.
