Though the Brahmaputra Mail had originated at Dibrugarh in upper Assam at around 7.30 pm on July 30, the passengers were stranded for more than a day at the Guwahati railway station due to a major bomb blast on the railway track at Sarupeta in lower Assam on Saturday morning.

The train, which reached Guwahati at 11.30 am on July 31, was regulated here on Saturday. On Sunday, the passengers were transshipped at 8.30 am by 12 buses to New Bongaigaon, from where the Brahmaputra Mail finally left at around 5.30 pm on Sunday.

``Since Sunday's Brahmaputra Mail from Guwahati was cancelled, many Delhi-bound passengers of that train too went up to New Bongaigaon to board the previous day's train. As such, weare not immediately in a position to provide the exact list of passengers, and who had boarded which coach of the ill-fated train,'' said a senior railway official.

There were also 14 bus-loads of passengers who were taken by the railways from Guwahati to New Bongaigaon on Sunday for the Northeast Express, which too was started from there instead of Guwahati due to the previous day's blast at Sarupeta.

There is such a lack of coordination between Guwahati, the headquarters of Northeast Frontier railway, and its control room at New Jalpaiguri and Kishanganj, that very little information is being made available by the authorities here.

Till 6 pm, the railway authorities were able to put up a list of only 18 passengers who have sustained injuries in the mishap, all those who have been admitted to the New Jalpaiguri railway hospital.

Till afternoon, the authorities here were shunting between a bomb explosion and a head-on collision as the reason behind the mishap. Moreover, the local stations of the AllIndia Radio and Doordarshan too did not carry special bulletins on the accident despite the fact that most victims of the two ill-fated trains belonged to the State.

Till 7 pm, the railway authorities in the NF railway headquarters here have put the official death toll at 189, this being the number of bodies which were taken out of the damaged bogies.

The total number of persons hospitalised stood at 310, of which 19 have been admitted to the New Jalpaiguri railway hospital, 49 in Kishanganj civil hospital, 52 in Kishanganj medical college hospital, 157 in the Islampur civil hospital and 33 in the Panjipur BSF base hospital.