: Sixty-two persons were injured, 10 of them grievously, when the Sealdah-Ajmer Express derailed near rural Kanpur in the early hours of Wednesday. No casualties were reported.
Fifteen coaches — 13 sleeper coaches and two general ones — went off the track between the Rura and Metha junctions, some 50 km from Kanpur, on the Kanpur-Tundla section of North Central Railway.
The derailment happened around 5.20 a.m., an NCR spokesperson said.
While the police had initially claimed that two lives were lost in the accident, both the State administration and the Railways later clarified that there had been no casualties.
“We had initially received information of two deaths but we have now confirmed there are none,” said Superintendent of Police, Kanpur Dehat, Prabhakar Chaudhary.
45 under treatment
Of the injured passengers, 45 are still receiving treatment at the Kanpur Dehat district hospital, while 10 were referred to the Lala Lajpat Rai (Hailet) Hospital in Kanpur. The injured include 28 women.
The cause of derailment is not yet known and the Railways have ordered a probe. Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu, who was “personally monitoring” the rescue work, said “a thorough investigation will be carried out to ascertain the cause.”
Statutory inquiry
The cause of derailment could not be ascertained at this moment, Railways spokesperson Anil Saxena told The Hindu . The Commissioner of Railway Safety (Northern Circle) S.K Pathak will hold a statutory inquiry into the incident and is expected to visit the site on Thursday. “We will have to wait for the preliminary inquiry commission report,” Mr. Saxena said.
Fog not the reason behind the accident
He dismissed the foggy conditions as being a factor behind the accident. “Visibility was sufficient so fog was not an issue. There was little haziness but enough for running train operations,” the official said. When asked about the speed of the train at the time of derailment, Mr. Saxena said it was running at “normal speed permissible in that section”, over 100 km.
Why were there no casualties despite the derailment of 15 bogies? While stressing that it was a “matter of investigation,” Mr. Saxena guessed there could be a number of factors behind this. “The coaches did not climb over each other. Maybe they got detached from the main body immediately after the derailment. Every accident has its own circumstances...whether the coupling broke or not, the extent of the derailment, it does not happen in a similar way all the time. We cannot conjecture at this moment,” Mr. Saxena said.
Compensation and relief
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav announced an ex-gratia compensation of Rs. 50,000 to those critically injured and Rs. 25,000 for passengers with minor injuries. Mr. Prabhu also promised compensation to the injured.
The Railways rushed accident relief material via train and medical van from Allahabad, Kanpur and Tundla, even as senior officials and police officers dashed to the site for relief operations. Over 30 trains were diverted, terminated or cancelled on the route, a Railways spokesperson said. Evacuation of the stranded passengers lasted two hours, Mr. Chaudhary said. The Railways arranged 12 buses to evacuate passengers to Kanpur, and five buses for Agra.
This is the second derailment of an express train in the district since November. More than 145 persons were killed and close to 200 injured when 14 coaches of the Patna-bound Indore-Rajendranagar Express went off the track between the Pukhrayan and Malasa stations along the Jhansi-Kanpur section last month.
Seven coaches that were not derailed departed for Ajmer at 12.50 pm and another train, with 10 coaches, took passengers from the derailed coaches to Ajmer at 3.30 pm, Railway Board Member-Traffic Mohd Jamshed said at a press conference in New Delhi.
