Railways admit human error; absconding signal maintainer and helper suspended

Residents of Samlaya, a village 27 km from Vadodara, had just gone to bed after a game of night cricket when they woke up to a deafening sou...

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Residents of Samlaya, a village 27 km from Vadodara, had just gone to bed after a game of night cricket when they woke up to a deafening sound in the wee hours of Thursday.

Moments later, they realised that it was the sound of the Sabarmati Express colliding with a goods train, killing 16 persons and injuring 93.

The incident, which railway officials blamed on human error, took place at 3.13 am after the Ahmedabad-bound train left Godhra station. With no stop at Samlaya, the train was given a green light near B-cabin for the third track. But the 9168-Up train jumped to the loop line, hitting a stationary container train from behind. The impact was strong enough to reduce its electric engine to a mangled heap, throwing the front portion some metres away into a field.

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Starting with the engine, six sleeper coaches — S-5 to S-10 — and an AC coach, A-1, piled one on the other. The driver of Sabarmati Express, Sitaram Kotwal, and his assistant Kishan Lal died on the spot.

After visiting the spot near B-cabin, Western Railway General Manager M.Z. Ansari admitted that the railway employees were at fault. He said that the helper of the signal maintainer was not even authorised to do the job.

‘‘He (the helper) was not trained to do the job. It remains to be found out how he went on to handle the signals. Prima facie, it seems that the lever that sustains the route interlock was first disengaged and then the signals tinkered with, leading to the train moving to the loop line,’’ Ansari said. ‘‘We have failed. There’s no excuse for this disaster,’’ he added.

The two employees — signal maintainer Balwant Singh and his helper Bodhu Poona — went missing soon after the incident.

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Western Railway CPRO Shailendra Kumar said that they have been suspended for working on tracks without permission.

Apparently, the driver had applied two brakes to avert the accident. The passengers say that they felt some jerks and were almost thrown out of their seats even before the collision.

K.K. Tiwari, a BHEL employee travelling in the A-1 coach, was reading a book when the accident took place. ‘‘I was sleepy and had asked the coach attendant at Godhra to wake me up before Vadodara. But he refused, so I preferred to stay awake. Perhaps, that saved me, as most of the dead were fast asleep,’’ he said.

Recounting the horror, Tiwari said: ‘‘Suddenly, there was a big jerk and I was tossed in the air. The person sleeping opposite me, and the one above him, fell on me. For a moment, I thought this was the end. The coach tilted and there was smoke and dust. On impulse, I smashed the glass window open with my suitcase. The scene outside was more scary: The coach was hanging some 25 ft in air. My co-travellers and I used blankets to climb down.’’

The Vadodara and Panchmahals administration sent rescue teams immediately.

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A team of Western Railway officials also reached within hours to supervise rescue operation, which began with a hitch as gas cutters and other equipment took time to arrive.

Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his ministers, Union Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav and his deputy Naran Rathwa dashed to the spot amid chaos.

Army rushes help

PUNE: The Army’s Southern Command has rushed a 150-strong team of personnel, including doctors, to the rescue of victims of the collision between Ahmedabad-bound Sabarmati Express and a goods train at Samlaya near Vadodara early on Thursday morning. At least 16 people are reported killed and 92 injured in the accident.

A Southern Command spokesperson in Pune told The Indian Express that the Vadodara civil administration had made a request to the Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (EME) School, located at Vadodara, for a rescue team to the site. — ENS