Dec 7, 1998
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RAILWAYS Nightmare on the Tracks Another accident, another inquiry on what caused it. The only certainty: the huge toll of human lives. By Ramesh Vinayak
Barely a minute later, 130 passengers were dead and over 1,500 others trapped in the wreckage of badly damaged compartments. The Sealdah Express had rammed into three of the Frontier Mail's detached bogies that had overturned on the adjacent track. The thunderous sound of the collision was replaced by the shrieks of passengers trapped in a pile of mangled metal -- all that remained of the six coaches and the engine of the Sealdah. Only seconds earlier, Hazari Lal, the guard of the Frontier Mail had noticed the derailment of a few bogies ahead of his cabin. He jumped out but before he could pick up detonators and blast them to alert the driver of the Sealdah Express, which was coming from the opposite direction, it had already crashed into the Frontier Mail bogies. It took Lal 10 minutes to run to the nearest level crossing to convey the news of the accident.
While it took nearly two hours for the railway authorities to mount rescue and relief operations, immediate and crucial assistance came from residents of nearby villages. Jolted out of their slumber by the huge bang which was heard up to 4 km away, it didn't take too long for them to descend upon the site. From the public-address systems of local gurdwaras in Daudpur and Kauri villages, there was an unusual wake-up call. Instead of early morning prayers, the granthis (local priests) informed villagers about the tragedy that had struck in the vicinity. "It was an SOS from the abode of God," says Jaswant Singh, a farmer who was among the first to reach the spot with his tractor-trolley. In no time, hundreds of helping hands from neighbouring villages had made their way to the site, requisitioning all they could to rescue the survivors. As the tractor lights flashed on the debris, they worked with their bare hands and hammers to rip open the badly smashed bogies and extricate the survivors. They burnt paddy straw to keep the injured warm before shifting them on tractor-trailers, trucks and even scooters to nearby hospitals. "But for the timely evacuation of the injured by the locals, the toll would have been higher," said P.C. Dogra, Punjab Police chief. The survivors were even more overwhelmed by gratitude. "I was trapped and bleeding when they came like angels from the sky," says Farooq Khan, one of the injured. Amid the confusion, the heroism of three youth, Dalip Singh, Charanjit Singh and Brahm Dev, who cycled down 6 km to the site, was admirable. Blacksmiths by profession, Dalip and Charanjit and Brahm battled for 11 hours to rescue survivors sandwiched in crushed compartments. "We just answered the call of duty," says Dalip. What remains a mystery is why and how the accident took place. The sequence seems clear but the chain of errors -- human or technical -- is not. Whether it was the coupling linking the first nine bogies to the rest of the Frontier Mail that snapped first, leading to derailment or whether it was derailment that led to the coupling breakage is still unclear. "The coupling breakage, derailment and overturning of the coaches which infringed the other track took place in a matter of seconds," says a senior railway official. So suddenly were the Frontier Mail coaches flung across the adjacent track that the Sealdah Express driver couldn't even think of applying the breaks. In all, 16 bogies were affected, six of them smashed and four capsized. The Sealdah Express bore the brunt of the impact."It looks like a highly improbable accident but the inquiry would look into all possible angles," assures V.K. Aggarwal, chairman of the Railway Board. It will take a while for the Railways to understand the cause. Still, one thing the survivors won't forget is the spirited help they got from locals at a time when even hoping seemed a bleak proposition. |
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It's past 3.00 on the cold
winter morning of November 26. The drivers of the Mumbai-bound 3152 UP Sealdah Express and
the Amritsar-bound 2903 UP Frontier Mail, Subhash Lal and Ashwani Kumar, are oblivious of
the fact that nine bogies of the Frontier have got detached. Travelling at speeds of 100
km per hour in opposite directions, the engines of the two trains breeze past each other
near Ludhiana and the drivers exchange torch-light blinks, signalling "all
clear". It wasn't. 
It was one of the worst rail disasters
in the history of the Northern Railways. It took over 12 hours to extricate the bodies of
the 130 dead. Over 200 were hospitalised with multiple injuries. Survivors were still
shell-shocked. "It was like a prolonged thunder," said a dazed Suresh Prasad of
Lucknow who along with his six family members was going home after a pilgrimage to Vaishno
Devi on the ill-fated Sealdah Express. The retinue of officials who rushed to the site
were baffled about how such an accident could occur in the first place. "It's a freak
accident," said Union Railway Minister Nitish Kumar. 
