Rajbala from Satna in Madhya Pradesh had barely started a conversation with her husband who was travelling with her to Haridwar when their coach seemed to jump into the air near Khatauli.
They were making plans about the things they will do after taking a dip in the Ganga at Haridwar on August 21, 2017 on the occasion of “Somti Amayasya”, a day of great significance for Hindus. Suddenly it was all dark and she passed out. She remembered being pulled out from the coach by someone. On regaining consciousness, her thought was about her husband who was missing. All she could hear were cries and there were lifeless bodies all around.
Rajesh Das from Kolkata was also travelling to Haridwar with a group of 40 women from his colony to take a dip in the Ganga. The local residents of Khatauli cut the window of S1 and pulled him out. Amid noise and fear all around, he managed to pull some of his fellow travellers. “There was this extremely loud sound, after which I remember people sitting above my birth fell on me. It was almost like an earthquake. I thought I am going to die of suffocation and then I became unconscious,” remembered teary-eyed Mr. Das who was yet to locate six fellow travellers from his group. “I don’t know what happened to them. What will we say to their families?”
Like Ms. Das and Mr. Rajbala, there were hundreds of passengers who were going to Haridwar on the occasion of “Somti Amavasya”.
On August 20, 2017, there were many people outside the mortuary, looking for their loved ones.
Muzaffarnagar resident Iftikhar, a man in his late 30s, was looking for his younger brother, Ishtiyaq, who was travelling by the same train. “I could not find him anywhere. His phone is switched off. He is not there in the list of injured. I have come here finally with my worst fears coming true,” he said.
Sahil Ahmad, anothr Muzaffarnagar resident who was coming from Puri, suffered minor injuries. Sitting on a bed of Khatauli health centre, he recounted those 10 seconds which he would “never to go through again”.
“No one had a clear idea what was happening. But everyone was afraid that they may not be alive to know what happened. There was complete darkness before my eyes. Someone pulled me out of the window,” he said. When he came out all he could hear was screams for help and injured people.
Most of the survivors complained that the official machinery reached late. The local residents helping the accident victims were furious with the administration. Some of them brought their own gas cutting machines to open the mangled coaches.
Ten minutes before his AC coach jumped off the track and swung in air only to fall on other coaches, Vishal had called home in Gwalior and told his family every thing was fine. He too was headed for Haridwar. “I can only thank god for keeping me alive because what I saw after regaining consciousness made me cry. I saw bodies and people crying for help,” Mr. Vishal said.
There were hundreds of local residents of Khatauli who were the first ones to reach on the spot and rescue people. Some of them like Sanjeev who lives in the railway colony where the accident happened, told The Hindu that “witnessing the accident and seeing the coaches on each other, in itself, was a horror”.
“There was such a din that you cannot understand who was saying what. In one coach we saw people were stuck, trying to come out of the derailed bogey. Without thinking, some of us started pulling people out,” he said trying to catch his breath.
