India : The number of confirmed deaths in the three-train crash in India’s Odisha state had risen to 288 on Tuesday, among them 83 bodies still unidentified, authorities said.
About 1,100 passengers were also injured in Friday’s crash involving two express passenger trains and a freight train in the Balasore district of the eastern state.
Pradeep Kumar Jena, the state’s chief secretary, announced the latest official death toll on Twitter.
“Those who want to take the bodies after identification, the state government will provide them ambulances,” he said.
About 3,400 passengers were travelling on two express trains – the Coromandel Express which runs between the eastern cities of Kolkata and Chennai, and the Howrah Superfast Express, travelling north between the cities of Bengaluru and Howrah – when the Coromandel crashed into a stationary freight train and then into the other express.
The impact was so forceful that it caused at least a dozen carriages to derail.
Many carriages flipped over on to another track and were hit by the Howrah Superfast Express, leaving hundreds of passengers trapped inside the mangled wreckage of the coaches.
Both passenger trains were travelling at about 125kph.
The bodies are being embalmed to allow more time for relatives to identify them. More than 12 anatomy and forensic experts are engaged in the identification process.
The All India Institute of Medical Sciences hospital in Bhubaneswar has asked for five freezers to store 123 bodies it has received, many of them mutilated.
Blood samples have also been collected from the scene for DNA matching.
Railway Minister Ashiwini Vaishnaw has said the horrific accident was due to “a change in electronic interlocking”.
Such a system prevents the routes of different trains coming into conflict through arrangement of the tracks. The aim is to ensure no train is given the signal to proceed unless the route is proven safe.
An initial investigation by Indian Railways has suggested a “mistaken” signal probably caused the Coromandel Express to enter a loop line on which the freight train was parked.
