Return
to Story Page
To print: Select File and then Print from your
browser's menu
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE
BAAD (MATHURA), JULY 16: The GT Express whizzed past Farah station, between Agra and Mathura, around 2.10 on Friday morning. A couple of minutes later it rammed into the derailed bogies of goods train Bellary Special leaving 17 passengers died and 206 injured.
Driver of the GT Express, running between Chennai and Delhi, Devender Singh noticed the fallen bogies on the tracks when he was "about 150 meters" away from them. But it was too late for him to do anything.
A wounded Singh recalls the journey from Farah railway station onwards: "We were running around 10 minutes late. Our last stop had been at Agra and we were running full steam ahead. Suddenly, around 150 meters ahead I saw the derailed bogies. There were no flares, no flags. The minute we saw it, we knew there was no way of avoiding the collision. We hit the bogies with full force."
Twelve bogies of the goods train, carrying wheat sacks, had reportedly derailed a few minutes before GT Express came down the parallel track. "The bearing of a wagonof the goods train ceased and the axle broke," explains Alok Dave, additional divisional railway manager (Central Division). "As a result, 21 wagons of the goods train derailed, some of them infringing the down track on which GT Express was coming. The time difference was very little."
The first three bogies of the passenger train, including a general coach, were thrown up and fell on top of the derailed goods train. The next three smashed into each other and three more were affected. Nine coaches were affected by the collision in total, of which seven were sleepers, one an unreserved coach and one the luggage-cum-passenger coach. Most of them contained passengers who had boarded the train from Nagpur and Agra.
"We were fast asleep," recounts Sheila Devi, grimacing every time she moves her bandaged arm at the hospital. "The train was moving quite fast and suddenly there was this big jerk. In seconds our coach was a mangled heap. The lights had gone out and the air was filled with wails. Nobody moved tillvoices from outside encouraged and helped us to crawl out."
The first on the accident site were employees of the Oriental Structural Engineers. Building the highway, they were camping just 500 meters from the track. "The loud bang woke us up around 2.15 am," says Satish Dhyani, assistant manager at the site. "When we walked out we could see nothing and then we went further and saw this huge shadow of the two trains. It was pitch dark and we quickly activated our resources."
With flash lights they went forward. "None of the passengers from the affected bogies had come out," Dhyani adds. "It was only after we flashed our lights that people slowly started moving out. We had to use our cutters to saw through the iron grills and help them out."
Seventeen dead bodies were removed from the mangled bogies, of which five were children. The over 200 injured were rushed to nearby hospitals. While a large number of them were discharged after first-aid, 100 suffered serious injuries. A compensation package has beenannounced by Railways Minister Nitish Kumar, who also visited the spot in the morning. An ex-gratia amount of Rs 25,000 has been announced for the kin of the dead, Rs 5,000 to the seriously injured and Rs 500 to those who sustained minor injuries. This is besides the accidental insurance cover of Rs 4 lakh.
Commissioner of Railway Safety (Central Circle), S C Gupta will be conducting the statutory inquiry into the cause of the accident.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
------------------------------------------------------------
This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
------------------------------------------------------------