Railway officials at the Kanpur station made the mistake by sending the train on a wrong route.

Panic-stricken passengers then pulled the chain of the train which stopped near Sarsol railway station, about 20 kms from Kanpur.

“We went to the Train Ticket Examiner (TTE) and told him that the train was heading towards the wrong direction. He then passed the information to his seniors,” said Praveen Kumar Srivastava, a passenger. The harried passengers said that at first the TTE refused to take the train back to Kanpur saying that he has been asked by the authorities to head to Allahabad. “After a drama of over two hours, we were informed that the railway authorities have decided to take the train back to Kanpur,” said another passenger Dharmendra.

At Kanpur, angry passengers held demonstrations. A senior railway official in Lucknow said the mistake occurred because the Northern Railway headquarters had failed to give them the route programme.

An official from Kanpur said another train with a similar number, 4006 (Lichvi Express that runs from Delhi to Darbhanga via Kanpur, Allahabad and Varanasi) added to the confusion, leading to the mistake.