A high-speed train derailed in eastern India after suspected sabotage of the railway line, sending carriages crashing into a river and leaving at least 50 people dead, officials said Tuesday.
Railways Minister Nitish Kumar, visiting the wreckage of the elite Rajdhani Express that was headed from Calcutta to New Delhi, said a section of the track had been tampered with before the train arrived late Monday at a speed of 130 kilometres per hour.
While Kumar said around 50 people had died, other officials said the death toll could rise and a passenger who survived the crash said more than 150 people had been killed.
”Fifty people have been killed. It seems to be sabotage,” Kumar told reporters at the scene of the disaster in the Rafiganj area of Bihar state, some 500 kilometres west of Calcutta.
”Had there been any suspicion over the condition of the track, speed restrictions would have been immediately imposed,” he said.
India’s junior railways minister, Bandaru Dattatreya, said the derailment of the train carrying 535 passengers could have been the work of the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC), a leftist guerrilla group.
The MCC has been fighting for decades against the government and wealthy landowners in Bihar, one of India’s most caste-polarised states.
Officials have linked the group to Maoist rebels in Nepal, where a leftist insurgency has left more than 4 400 people dead since 1996. Nepal’s Maoists have killed more than 100 security personnel since the weekend.
However, India’s Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani expressed doubt the derailment was sabotage.
”Information that I have indicates it is an accident,” Advani, who is also India’s home minister, told reporters in New Delhi.
A passenger who survived the crash said one of the 16 carriages that derailed was completely submerged in the Dhabi River, swollen by months of torrential rains.
Rescue workers cut the compartment with gas cutters to pull out bodies, said 60-year-old Sahiram Pareek, who was headed to a wedding in western India.
His wife had been assigned a seat in the ill-fated coach but had switched at the last minute to sit with her husband.
”I saw 150 bodies being taken out from damaged coaches at the accident site,” Pareek told AFP by telephone.
”Inclement weather and rising river waters are posing problems for the rescue workers,” he added.
Gaya district’s magistrate, Brajesh Malhotra, said that two of the train’s carriages were dangling from a bridge over the river.
In New Delhi, Railways Board Chairman I.I.S.M. Rana said army units and the civilian administration in Bihar had been mobilised to join the rescue operation, adding heavy rains and the remoteness of the area were hampering relief work.
Trains were sent to the area from New Delhi and Calcutta carrying relief supplies and relatives of the victims.
It is the latest tragedy to hit Indian Railways, which is beset by an antiquated rail network and a bloated bureaucracy. In June 2001, 57 people were killed when a train derailed in the southern state of Kerala.
With a staff of 1,6-million people, Indian Railways claims to be the world’s biggest employer and carries about 13 million people a day.
A government report last year found that 515 railway bridges needed to be replaced and that 12 260 kilometres of track needed to be repaired.
But there have been few accidents involving the Rajdhani Express, which is fully air-conditioned and on which tickets can cost as much as $150, way above the average Indian monthly salary. – Sapa-AFP