A railway carriage rammed into a house, rescue workers working for hours to pull out trapped bodies, overturned mangled coaches being hauled off with hi-tech cranes — for 24 hours since the tragedy struck, the town of Khatauli lived through frightening visuals.
On Saturday evening, Manoj Baliyan and his family were enjoying the cool breeze when suddenly they heard a massive thud and saw a railway bogie flung in the air and heading towards their house like a giant projectile.
"We were sitting close to the main gate, and we ran for our lives inside the courtyard. The coach crashed into the front of our house, shattering its facade. If the bogie had entered all the way inside or crashed over from the rooftop, we all would have been buried," he said.
But, this was just the beginning of the nightmare for the 42-year-old man, as injured passengers were being flung out of the doors and emergency windows by the impact of the derailment that has claimed 22 lives and left 156 injured, 26 of whom are in a critical condition.