Balasore: The three-train accident near Bahanaga Bazar railway station in Odisha’s Balasore district continues to haunt the students of Banahaga Bazar High School, which was used as a temporary mortuary after the accident.
According to reports, the 566 students of the school are in a state of panic as their school and have said they would not attend school when it reopens after summer vacation on June 16.
The district administration shifted the bodies to other places from the school after nearly two days, sources said. The situation is so grave that recently a team of government officials led by the Project Director, District Education Officer, and the local BDO visited the school and held a meeting with the school managing committee on the issue. The team has urged the school managing committee members to initiate measures to remove the fear from the minds of the students and encourage the parents to send their children to school.
The students say that as night falls, they hear sounds of people crying coming out of the school. They are of the firm belief that the school, which accommodated 288 dead bodies for two days till they were shifted to different hospitals, has turned out to be a haunted place. Fearing the presence of ‘ghosts’, they said that they would not attend classes in the school.
A senior government official said, “All students and their guardians will be counselled. An awareness programme will be launched among the local people to make them understand that fear is unnecessary. We will urge the students to come to school.”
Concerned over the development, the state government on Thursday sent Balasore District Collector Dattatraya Bhasusaheb Shinde for a field examination of the school premises. Following long discussions with the school managing committee, Shinde told the media, “I have surveyed the school. It has some old buildings with asbestos roofs. The condition of the school may have caused a sense of fear among the students.”
He further said that the school managing committee has been asked to submit a proposal on the steps that need to be taken to assuage the students and parents. “We will receive the proposals by today evening and I will send them to the government with my observations and suggestions.”
One of the proposals put forth by the local people is to rebuild the school building and perform some rituals to ‘purify’ the environment there. When asked about it, Shinde said, “Yes, they have told me about this and I will include this in my report to the government.”
It is worth mentioning here that immediately after the accident on June 2, 275 bodies and over 1,000 were shifted to the school before they were taken to different hospitals.
