The rail accident that killed nearly 300 people in India was caused by a fault in the signaling system, which caused one of the trains to change tracks, Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Sunday.
“Who did this and what the reasons were will become apparent during the investigation,” the minister said in an interview with the New Delhi television channel, quoted by the AP.
The explanation for what led to this train crash on Friday night comes as authorities are still on the ground clearing the wreckage left behind by the three trains involved (two of them passengers).
Earlier, the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency had already raised that preliminary investigations show that the signal given to the Coromandel Express train to enter the main line was later withdrawn.
The train entered another line, known as the Ring Line, and collided with a freight train parked there, according to PTI.
The accident occurred at 7:20 p.m. local time (1:50 p.m. Lisbon) on Friday, near a railway station in the town of Bahanaga, Odisha state, 1,000 miles northeast of the capital New Delhi.
Ten to 12 carriages of a train derailed and the wreckage of some of the carriages fell onto a nearby track, Indian Railways spokesman Amitabh Sharma said. This wreckage, the official added, was hit by another passenger train traveling from the opposite direction. A third freight train was also involved in the accident.
In addition to the nearly 300 deaths already reported, the disaster left around 900 injured, 56 of whom were in serious condition.
Source: DN
