Rail disaster in India: balance sheet revised downwards and resumption of traffic

Passenger and freight trains are running again on Monday at the site of India's worst rail disaster in decades, whose death toll has been revised downwards.

The cause of the collision between three trains on Friday night near Balasore, in the eastern state of Odisha, which killed nearly 300 people and injured more than a thousand, has been identified by authorities as being linked to a problem in the switching system. Authorities initially announced a death toll of 288 but the Odisha state government has since revised it to 275, with some bodies mistakenly counted twice.

Of the 1175 injured, 382 are still hospitalized, authorities said Sunday. Fears remain high that the death toll could rise as medical centres are overwhelmed with wounded, many in serious condition. After the disaster, large green nets were erected along the tracks, hiding the carcasses of disemboweled wagons, pushed on the side of the road.

Signalling "human error"

On Sunday, India's railway minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said the "cause of the accident and the people responsible for it" had been identified. He had specified that "the change that occurred during the electronic switch is at the origin of the accident". The minister was observed, hands clasped in prayer, as a first train loaded with coal passed through the site of the disaster late Sunday, 51 hours after the accident.

The initial findings of the investigation have not yet been made public but the Times of India, citing a preliminary investigation report, said on Sunday that a signalling "human error" may have caused the collision between the three trains. The Coromandel Express, linking Kolkata to Madras, had been given the green light to run on the main track but was diverted to a track where a freight train was already located, according to the newspaper.

The passenger train then collided at a speed of about 130 km/h with the freight convoy near Balasore, about 200 kilometers from Bhubaneswar, the capital of the state of Odisha. Three cars fell on an adjacent track, hitting the rear of an express train that was flying between Bangalore and Kolkata.

Deadliest accident in 20 years

At this stage, this rail accident is the deadliest in India since the head-on collision of two passenger trains on August 2, 1999 at Gaisal railway station in West Bengal that killed 285 people. India has seen a number of fatal train accidents, but safety has improved in recent years thanks to new investment and technological improvements.

The deadliest in the country's history remains that of June 6, 1981 when, in the state of Bihar (east), seven cars of a train crossing a bridge fell into the Bagmati River, killing between 800 and 1000,<> people.