At least eight persons, including the loco pilot, were killed and 14 others injured after a passenger train allegedly jumped a red signal and collided with a goods train from behind near Bilaspur station in Chhattisgarh on Tuesday, officials said.
Moments before the collision, Sanjeev Vishwakarma (35), a passenger of Gevra Road-Bilaspur train, was scrolling through his phone, while some passengers were busy chatting, and some were dozing off, unaware that within seconds, their journey would turn into a nightmare.
The accident occurred at 3.45 AM near Barabamboo, around 80 km from Jamshedpur, under the Chakradharpur Division of the South Eastern Railway (SER), they said.
'This is becoming the new normal. Accountability of @AshwiniVaishnaw ji is zero. The GOI has no answers whatsoever'
Anxious relatives of passengers in the Howrah-Mumbai Express, which was targeted by Maoists on Friday morning, are desperately calling up helpline numbers in Mumbai to know the status of their near and dear ones.Maoists blasted rail tracks in West Midnapore district in West Bengal in the wee hours of Friday, derailing 13 coaches of the Mumbai-bound Howrah-Kurla Lokmanya Tilak Gyaneshwari Super Deluxe Express. Five coaches were hit by a goods train, leaving at least 65 dead.
Several trains under the purview of SER and ECoR were cancelled or diverted on Wednesday, including the premium Rajdhani Express and Vande Bharat Express, owing to the blockade by members of the Kurmi community in Jharkhand and Odisha, officials said.
The protest started at 6 am on Tuesday with the blockade of the old National Highway 6, which connects Kolkata to Mumbai, at Khemasuli in Kharagpur Local police station area by Kudmi Samaj West Bengal, they said.
Agitators squatted on railway tracks at various places, leading to cancellation, short-termination and diversion of several trains.
A rail track between Sonua and Lotapahar stations in West Singhbhum, under Chakradharpur Division of South Eastern Railway (SER), was damaged past Friday night in a blast that was allegedly triggered by the Maoists.
Rediff.com correspondent Indrani Roy Mitra and Photographer Dipak Chakraborty reached the accident site near Jhargram in West Bengal, where a Mumbai-bound train derailed, early on Friday morning. She chronicles the grim situation at ground zero and asks some tough questions.
Passengers on the Howrah-Mumbai Duronto Express had a narrow escape on Friday when its engine and generator van got separated from the rest of the train. There was no report of any injury to any passenger. The central buffer coupling (CBC) that attaches the coaches and the engine along with the front generator van snapped.
A total of 1,177 passengers are booked on the New Delhi-Bilaspur special train, which departed at 4 pm, while 1,122 passengers are booked on the New Delhi-Dibrugarh special train that departed at 4:45 pm.
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