Anxious relatives of nearly 200 passengers, who boarded the ill-fated Indore-Patna Express, rushed to the local railway station and made frantic inquires to know the whereabouts of their loved ones.
“Inquires pertaining to 200 passengers have come to us so far. We, along with the help from Railways, are gathering information,” said Ajay Jha, a social worker, who was running a help centre with help of GRP at the railway station here. “The relatives of passengers who boarded (sleeper coaches) S-1, S-2 and S-3 are extremely worried as these coaches have faced the worst damage in the train derailment,” he said.
Government Railway Police Superintendent Mahesh Chandra Jain said that they have not received any official list of the victims of the accident. But, the GRP was trying at its level to find out about the passengers who have not been in contact with their relatives after the mishap.
He said efforts were on to hire a special bus to send the relatives of the passengers, whose where about are not yet known, to Bhopal from here. “From the State capital, these people want to go to Kanpur’s Dehat where the train derailed, to search for the dear ones,” Jain said.
At least 96 passengers were killed and 226 injured, 76 of them seriously, when 14 coaches of the Indore-Patna Express derailed near Pukhraya in Kanpur dehat district in the wee hours today.
Pandemonium was the overriding sentiment at the railway station here as distraught relatives of passengers who were aboard the ill-fated Indore-Patna Express, which derailed in the vicinity of Kanpur in the wee hours on Sunday, thronged to learn about the status of their kin but Railway authorities proved unable to provide precise details vis-a-vis casualties.
A Western Railway official said over phone that the helpline numbers include Indore 07311072, Ratlam 074121072, Ujjain 07342560906, Nagda 073661072, Urai 051621072, Jhansi 05101072, Kanpur 05131072, Allahabad 05321072, Aligarh 05711072 and Patna 06122202290.