New Delhi/Sonbhadra/Khandala: Three trains jumped off the tracks and another derailment was averted on Thursday in Uttar Pradesh, New Delhi and Maharashtra within a span of nine hours, the latest in a string of such incidents which saw the exit of Suresh Prabhu as railway minister in the Cabinet reshuffle last Sunday.
Luckily, barring injury to a passenger in the mishap in the national capital, no casualties were reported in other incidents.
The first derailment occurred at 6:25 am when seven coaches of the Jabalpur-bound Shaktipunj Express went off the tracks near the Obra Dam station in UP’s Sonbhadra district. Within hours, at around 11:45 pm, the Ranchi-Delhi Rajdhani Express derailed near Minto bridge in the national capital, leaving one person injured. These were followed by yet another derailment of a goods train in Maharashtra's Khandala at 3:55 pm, railway officials said. An accident was averted after locals spotted a fracture in a track between Farrukhabad and Fatehgarh in UP, minutes before the Kalindi Express was scheduled to pass the place, officials said.
Ironically, these mishaps occurred on a day Piyush Goyal, the new railway minister, chaired a high-level meeting with railway board officials. The spate of derailments over the past few weeks has raised concerns over the safety of railway operations despite large-scale overhaul of the infrastructure.
