The Hindu : Front Page : 19 killed, 100 injured as train derails in Maharashtra

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Thursday, Jun 17, 2004

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Front Page

19 killed, 100 injured as train derails in Maharashtra

By Our Mumbai Bureau

The engine and some bogies of the Matsyagandha Express which lie scattered after the train derailed near Mahad in Raigad district of Maharashtra on Wednesday. -- Photo: Vivek Bendre

MAHAD, JUNE 16. Nineteen persons were killed and 100 injured, 35 of them seriously, when the Mangalore-Kurla Matsyagandha Express hit two boulders and jumped off the track while crossing a 20-metre ravine near Ambivali village, Raigad district, about 150 km from Mumbai, around 6 a.m. today.

One of the bogies was hanging vertically from the bridge. The engine and three coaches of the train, running at around 90 km an hour, fell off the bridge. Four other bogies derailed and lay scattered between the bridge and the rock cutting.

Within hours, rescue teams arrived at the site and used gas cutters to force open the doors to rescue the trapped passengers. Some of the injured were admitted to hospitals in Mahad while others were taken by bus to Panvel and then to Mumbai.

The accident, the second in less than a year on the same track, took place between Veer and Karanjadi stations, not far from Ratnagiri town. The worst-affected were the passengers in the first three bogies, two of which were unreserved general compartments and one was a sleeper coach. The other four were also sleeper coaches.

According to Deepak Gupta, Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Konkan Railway, who was supervising the rescue operations, the boulders must have rolled down minutes before the train arrived.

After last year's accident, steps had been taken to prevent rocks from falling on the tracks by fixing special nets made of thick cables, he said. But the net only covers those portions of the rock-cuttings that are more than eight metres high. The boulders must have fallen from the uncovered area and could have come loose because of the heavy rain the previous night.

The Konkan Railway conducts patrols with inspection locomotives covering the tracks every two hours to detect any problem, particularly during the monsoon. If the boulders had rolled down 10 minutes before the train's arrival, the patrol would have noticed them and alerted the driver, Mr. Gupta said. The driver, M.D. Karmarkar, has been seriously injured. And despite the impact of the fall, the high-speed diesel in the engine did not ignite.

The single-track Konkan Railway cannot be used for at least 24 hours. Several long distance trains have been diverted and three trains cancelled. An officer said the damaged bogies had to be removed and 140 metres of the damaged track needed to be restored.

Compensation

While the Railway Minister, Laloo Prasad Yadav, announced a compensation of Rs. 1 lakh to the families of the dead and Rs. 15,000 to the injured, the Maharashtra Government said it would give Rs. 50,000 to the families of those who had died and between Rs. 5,000 and 10,000 to the injured.

Less than 10 days ago, the Konkan Railway had announced that it had spent Rs. 60 crores for safety measures along sections of the track most prone to landslips. It said it had installed inclinometers and anti-collision devices at various points and covered vulnerable rock-cuttings with steel netting. These steps were taken after the accident last year near Kankavli in Sindhudurg district, in which 50 persons were killed. The Managing Director of Konkan Railway, B. Rajaram, said the Commission of Railway Safety would hold an inquiry.

UNI, PTI report:

Bad weather forced the Maharashtra Chief Minister, Sushilkumar Shinde, and the Union Home Minister, Shivraj Patil, who had flown to the accident site to return to Mumbai.

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