An elderly woman’s “chharri” (stick) proved to be the saviour for a family of seven from Muzaffarpur in the tragic Indore-Patna Express derailment near Kanpur on Sunday.
The family of businessman Manoj Chaurasia of Muzaffarpur in Bihar, had boarded the ill-fated train at Indore and were going to their home in Patna. Chaurasia said that all the seven members of his family were trapped in bogie B1 after the accident.
“Trapped inside the damaged bogie, I broke the window pane with the help of my mother’s stick and came out after nearly an hour of the accident,” he said and thanked the Almighty for the providential escape. “Maa ki chhari ne pure parivar ki jaan bacha li (My mother’s stick saved life of the entire family),” he said.
Walking with the help of the “life-saving lucky” stick, the elderly mother was in shock and could not speak anything. Chaurasia’s wife Nandini said while the attendant of the coach and a few other passengers in the bogie lost their lives, for them, “Maut chhoo kar nikal gayi (death passed off touching us).”
Meanwhile, the death toll in the train tragedy mounted to 146 on Monday as rescuers wrapped up their operation with little hope of finding any survivor after overnight efforts to pull out trapped passengers from the mangled bogies.
IG (Kanpur range) Zaki Ahmad said the accident site has been inspected with the help of sniffer dogs and the chances of finding bodies are nearly nil now.