Pukhrayan (UP): At least 120 passengers were killed and more than 200 injured, nearly half of them grievously, in the worst train accident in recent years when 14 coaches of Indore-Patna Express derailed here in Kanpur rural area in the wee hours on Sunday due to suspected rail fracture.
The disaster took place just a little after 3 am when the passengers were jolted out of their sleep as the Patna-bound train 19321 jumped the tracks, badly damaging four ordinary sleeper coaches in which hundreds were trapped.
Of the four coaches, the S1 and S2 had telescoped into each other and most of the casualties were feared to have been in these two compartments. S3 and S4 coaches also suffered severe damage while an AC III tier coach was also affected but casualties in it were not heavy.
As railway personnel assisted by those of Army, NDRF and state police carried out the search and rescue operations, the number of casualties kept on increasing by the hour. By 8 pm, 120 bodies were recovered from the mangled coaches and most of them taken to Mati mortuary in Kanpur rural, according to IG (Kanpur range) Zaki Ahmad, who said a few more passengers were feared trapped.
The rescue operation will continue in the night under floodlights, officials said. “We have plans to work through the night. We have put up lights,” Army’s Kanpur Station Commander Brig. B.M. Sharma said.
Among the dead, 62 have been identified. At least 20 are from Uttar Pradesh, 15 from Madhya Pradesh and six from Bihar and one each from Maharashtra and Gujarat.
Post-mortem of 27 identified bodies has been done and they were handed over to the families. Ambulance facilities were provided to the families of the victims to transport the bodies, officials said.
An Army man Prabhu Narayan Singh, Anil Kishore of BSF from Rohtas, Bihar, and UP police constable Lakhan Singh from Jhansi were among the dead.
HELPLINES
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