News Reports : Editor’s Pick 19 June 2024

Editor’s Pick

19 June 2024

In the Editor’s Pick newsletter, The Hindu explains why a story was important enough to be carried on the front page of today’s edition of our newspaper.

Railways backs out of human error claim; toll climbs to 10

The death toll in the accident involving Kanchanjunga Express and a goods train in Darjeeling district of West Bengal rose to 10 on Tuesday, with a six-year-old child dying of injuries at the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital. The Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS) will begin an inquiry into the cause of the accident today, even as the Railways seemed to walk back on its initial claim that human error caused the accident, acknowledging that the automatic signalling system was not working on the route. The Kavach train protection system is yet to be installed for the region’s rail network. The deceased include three Railway employees — the driver of the goods train initially blamed for the accident, the guard of the Kanchanjunga Express, and a Railway Mail Service employee travelling in the parcel van of the express — and seven passengers. Railway services were restored through the down line at the accident site from 7.30 a.m. on Tuesday, with the first passenger train passing through at 10.42 a.m. Operations on the up line had been restored at 5.40 p.m. on Monday. Three trains were diverted and two were cancelled on Tuesday due to the accident. The survivors from the Kanchanjunga Express — which had left Agartala station at 8.25 a.m. on Sunday —reached Sealdah station in Kolkata on Tuesday morning, with many passengers in a state of trauma and shock from the ordeal.

Having visited the accident site on Tuesday, Chief Commissioner of Railway Safety Janak Kumar Garg said an inquiry will be made to ascertain the reasons for the accident. “The automatic signal was not working and so the drivers had to follow certain procedures. The first driver had to follow those procedures and similarly, the driver after that. Now we have to investigate what mistakes were made,” he said. The CRS inquiry will be held at the office of the Additional Divisional Railway Manager from 10 a.m. on June 19 (Wednesday), according to a notification issued by Northeast Frontier Railway, with the public being asked to bring any information related to the accident before the CRS or write to him. While the Railways initially said that prima facie, the accident was the result of a human error, it has since come to light that the automatic signalling system along the route where the accident occurred was not functional since Monday morning. Hence, manual memos were issued by the station master of Rangpani station to both the trains — the Kanchanjunga Express at 8:20 a.m., and fifteen minutes later, to the goods train at 8:35 a.m. — permitting them to cross the signal at red. This seems to contradict the claims of Railway authorities, who had blamed the goods train driver of wrongly crossing the signal at red. Questions have also been raised about delays in the installation of Kavach, an indigenously developed automatic train protection system.

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