Balasore: One of the most horrifying rail accidents India has ever seen in the past occurred in Bahahanaga Bazar railway station in Balasore district on Friday evening.
According to official figures, 261 persons died and over 1,000 were injured in the tragedy involving two express trains and a goods train that was stationed at Bahanaga Bazar on the loop line.
In a massive rescue and relief operation, hundreds of ambulances were mobilised, hospitals were readied to accommodate the injured, and morgues for the deceased.
Scenes at the hospitals in Bahanaga, Soro, and Balasore were heart-wrenching, with relatives of dead and injured passengers searching frantically for their loved ones.
An injured man, whose son was missing collapsed several times. Every time, he regained consciousness, the man was pleading in a stammered tone for the whereabouts of his son.
A seven-member group from the same family was traveling to Kerala from Kolkata for work. Two youths (cousins) in the group, were seated together and were cracking jokes seconds before the tragedy.
When one of the two came back to his senses, he realised that the cousin was no more – tragic, as the youth narrated the ordeal.
The scene at the morgue of the Community Health Centre in Soro was intense enough to shake the strongest-willed. Space was a constraint for bodies that had arrived in carriage vehicles, piled one upon another.
Hats off to the good Samaritans, volunteers, rescue workers, and personnel of different agencies who gave it all to ensure that the injured were hospitalised at the earliest and the dead be rested with dignity.
Human error, technical glitch, overspeeding or wrong signaling – the cause/s behind this mammoth calamity could be any or many. Inquiries will be undertaken and heads might roll – but all this is not going to level the loss of hundreds or maybe more than a thousand families affected by this tragedy.
Besides, an incident of this magnitude is surely going to have an impact on the hearts and minds of rail travellers. Friday – 3rd June 2023, will go down in the annals of the history of Indian Railways as a Black Day – Prayers for the lives lost, and speedy and healthy recovery of the injured.
