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India arrests 3 officials over deadly Odisha train crash

July 7, 2023

At least 293 people were killed and hundreds of others were injured when multiple trains collided in India's eastern state of Odisha last month.

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Rescuers work at the site of a train collision in Balasore district
According to the local media reports, preliminary report concluded that the accident occured due to human error. Image: Javed Dar/Xinhua/IMAGO

India's federal police arrested three railway officials on Friday over a deadly train crash last month.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the crime investigation agency of India, said it had arrested a senior section engineer, a signal engineer and a technician under the criminal code. 

They are charged with destruction of evidence and culpable homicide not amounting to murder, it said. That charge can carry up to 10 years in India. The investigations were ongoing, the CBI said.

At least 290 people died in the triple train crash that took place near Balasore in the eastern Indian state of Odisha on June 2. Thousands were injured in the crash,  India's deadliest rail accident since 1995, when 358 people were killed in a collision near New Delhi.

Earlier, the CBI had launched an investigation after registering a case of criminal negligence.

Lapses in signaling works thought to have led to the accident

The arrests came days after the Commissioner of Railways Safety submitted its preliminary report on the accident to the railway board .

The report pointed to lapses in signaling work and a subsequent signal failure as the probable cause of the accident. 

The preliminary investigations showed that a passenger train, the Coromandel Express, which was heading southbound to Chennai from Kolkata, moved off the main line and entered a loop track at cruising speed. Loop tracks are used to park trains off the main line.

The Coromandel Express then crashed into a stationary freight train. 

The crash caused the engine and the first four or five coaches of the Coromandel Express to jump the tracks, topple and hit the last two coaches off the Yeshwantpur-Howrah train heading in the opposite direction on the second main track, pulling a second passenger locomotive into the crash.

The accident happened as the government seeks to modernize the rail network, much of which was built during British colonial rule.

Despite government efforts to improve safety and upgrade the railway infrastructure, several hundred accidents occur every year as usage and demand steadily climbs.

ara, msh/jcg (Reuters, AFP)