NEW DELHI — In one of India's deadliest train accidents in decades, more than 230 people were killed and hundreds remained trapped after two passenger trains derailed in Balasore district, Odisha.
Rescuers faced a challenging task of navigating through debris and wreckage to retrieve bodies and free survivors. The incident occurred when 10 to 12 coaches of one train derailed, with debris falling onto a nearby track and colliding with another passenger train coming from the opposite direction. This caused additional coaches to derail.
There were reports of involvement of a third freight train, but confirmation was pending. The death toll continued to rise, reaching 233 by Saturday morning. The search and rescue efforts were ongoing, with scores of dead bodies lying near the tracks covered by sheets.
Local villagers and rescuers displayed immense bravery in assisting with evacuation and providing aid. The cause of the accident was under investigation, and the state declared Saturday as a day of mourning.
An unidentified survivor recounted that he was asleep when the impact of the derailment woke him up. He witnessed other passengers with broken limbs and disfigured faces. The derailed train, Coromandel Express, was traveling from Howrah in West Bengal to Chennai in Tamil Nadu. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences to the affected families and wished a speedy recovery to the injured.
Despite ongoing efforts by the government to enhance rail safety, India's railways, which constitute the world's largest train network under a single management, still experience several hundred accidents annually.
In August 1995, a collision between two trains near New Delhi claimed the lives of 358 people, marking one of the deadliest train accidents in India in many years. Similarly, in 2016, a passenger train derailed between Indore and Patna, resulting in the death of 146 individuals.
The majority of train accidents in India are attributed to human error or outdated signaling equipment. With a vast railway network of 64,000 kilometers (40,000 miles) and an average of over 12 million people relying on 14,000 trains for daily travel, the scale of the railway system in India is immense.