India rescue work ends as focus turns to cause of worst train crash in decades

Name: More than 200 dead, 850 hurt in India's Odisha rail crash
Uploaded: 2023-06-04T21:33:10.000Z
Duration: 2 min 44 s
Description: More than 200 dead, 850 hurt in India's Odisha rail crash

The death toll from Friday’s crash was revised down from 288 to 275 after it was found that some bodies had been counted twice, officials said

State-run Indian Railways is conducting an initial inquiry to determine the cause of the crash – one of India’s deadliest – near the district of Balasore, Odisha

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Railway workers help to restore services at the accident site of a three-train collision near Balasore in the eastern state of Odisha, India on Sunday. Photo: AFP via Getty Images / TNS

Reuters

Published: 5:33am, 5 Jun 2023

Indian rescuers completed operations on Sunday after the country’s deadliest rail crash in more than two decades, with signal failure emerging as the likely cause of an accident that killed at least 275 people.

The death toll from Friday’s crash was revised down from 288 after it was found that some bodies had been counted twice, said Pradeep Jena, chief secretary of the eastern state of Odisha.

The tally was unlikely to rise, he told reporters. “Now the rescue operation is complete.”

Healthcare workers help a family to load a makeshift coffin of a relative into an ambulance after a train collision in Balasore, at a hospital in Bhubaneswar in the eastern state of Odisha, India on Sunday. Photo: Reuters

Nearly 1,200 people were injured when a passenger train hit a stationary goods train, jumped the tracks and hit another passenger train passing in the opposite direction near the district of Balasore on Friday.

More than 900 people had been discharged from hospital while 260 were still being treated, with one patient in critical condition, the Odisha state government said.

State-run Indian Railways, which says it transports more than 13 million people every day, has been working to improve its patchy safety record, blamed on ageing infrastructure, and is conducting an initial inquiry to determine the cause of the crash.

India’s Railway Board, the top executive body, has recommended that the case be handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said.

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More than 200 dead, 850 hurt in India's Odisha rail crash