In a strange accident, a bull calf hit by a semi-high speed Vande Bharat Express train was thrown into the air and knocked down an 82-year-old man, killing him instantly, near Alwar railway station in Rajasthan on Wednesday. The calf also died on the spot.
The deceased, Shiv Dayal Sharma, was a retired railway employee in the electric department, and was standing about 30 meters from the collision spot.
The accident comes a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had flagged off the Delhi to Ajmer train, which is the world’s first semi-high-speed passenger train on high-rise overhead electric (OHE) territory.
Since 2019, there have been over one lakh instances of cattle run over by trains, according to official numbers available with the Indian Railways. In 2019-20, there were 27,057 instances which reduced to 19,960 instances in 2020-21. In 2021-22, these incidences increased to 28,727 cases. In 2022-23, until January 23, there were already 26,180 instances.
To prevent such collisions, Indian Railways is now toying with the idea of fencing railway tracks along the 622-km Mumbai–Ahmedabad stretch. The project that costs nearly ₹245.26 crore began in January earlier this year, Union Minister for Railways Ashwini Vaishnav had said.
In October last year, two cases of cattle hit, one at Atul railway station and another at Anand railway station, both in Gujarat were registered. In case of the Atul accident, the nose of the train had suffered severe damage then.
“In the current incident the train got a few scratches and continued its run without stopping,” public relations officer of North-Western Railway said.
Also, in Uttar Pradesh certain stretches under North Central Railway are vulnerable to cattle hits and Mr. Vaishnaw had mentioned building a 1,000-km long boundary wall.
