Joshi gets a taste of Rly ‘hospitality’

Joshi said, ‘‘It had the potential of a major accident. Had the train not been stopped, more bogies would have been derailed. It is not just me but the lives of a large number of passengers travelling with me were saved.’’

It was past midnight that the train braked to a stop with a terrible jerk, narrowly averting a major accident close to Mythia near Kanpur. Around midnight, when most of the passengers were asleep, the TTE and some passengers heard a deafening sound coming from the wheels of their bogey (No. 16) and saw smoke and sparks coming off the tracks.

‘‘The rear part of the train had to be detached and taken to Kanpur where another bogey was attached,’’ Joshi said.

Refusing to comment on the state of the Indian Railways, Joshi said: ‘‘The trains are getting very little time for proper check-up. I was told that one of the reasons behind the derailment was jammed brakes.’’

Recounting the harrowing experience, Atanu Bhattacharya, Joshi’s Press Advisor who was travelling with him, said: ‘‘When the passengers and TTE tried stopping the train from a second class compartment, the chain didn’t work. He had to run to the First AC compartment to pull the chain that brought the train to a halt.’’

For 4-5 km, Bhattacharya said, ‘‘the train dragged along the derailed bogies without the driver noticing or realising that something was wrong.’’

It was then that the passengers were jerked out of sleep and got to know they had narrowly escaped a disaster. The train finally reached Delhi at 3.30 pm, 10 hours behind schedule.