The B1 AC coach of the burning Nanded-Bangalore Express which charred 26 people including a child has left a permanent sadness and a pal of gloom descended on relatives, kith and kin and friends of the deceased.
The State-run Victoria Hospital in Bangalore where the charred bodies were brought on Saturday evening for DNA identification has witnessed a grim and sad movement of the waiting relatives and friends. For Dr Imran who was searching for his sister-in-law Dr Asra with her two-year-old son Mohammed who were travelling in the same compartment of the burning train, it was agonised wait at the Victoria Hospital morgue. Dr Imran and her wife Dr Shaheen from BTM layout Bangalore and were searching for Asra and her son.
However Dr Imran has some bleak hope from the fact that his sister-in-law’s name was not on the list of passengers in the bogey that was burnt. But the fear and tension was evident -- as they had not still heard from her. Family of 43-year-old Prathap Binay, employed with Cement Corporation of India in Rangareddy district of Andhra Pradesh also arrived at the mortuary looking for information. Binay, who hails from Patna in Bihar, had taken the train after visiting his in-laws living at Bellandur in Bangalore.
According to a doctor at the hospital, femur (thigh bone) of the dead will be preserved for DNA tests as many bodies were charred beyond recognition. Meanwhile, Karnataka Home Minister KJ George who visited the hospital mortuary consoled the relatives and said it might take some more time to identify the bodies as all the bodies have been charred beyond recognition.
Twenty-six passengers, including 12 women and two children, were burnt to death early Saturday when an air-conditioned coach of the Bangalore-Nanded Express caught fire near Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh. According to South Western Railway spokesman S Biswas, “Of the 65 passengers in the AC-3-tier B-1 coach, 39 escaped the blaze with injuries and 15 of them were admitted to hospitals at Anantapur and Puttaparthi for emergency treatment.”
The ill-fated train left Bangalore at 10.45 pm on Friday for an overnight journey to Nanded in Maharashtra, about 1,040 km away. Though the exact cause of the fire is not known, railway officials suspect a short-circuit in the AC coach could have triggered the inferno. The blaze spread rapidly in the early hours (around 3 am) when the train was travelling towards Dharmavaram from Kothacheruvu station after leaving Prashanti Nilayam station at Puttaparthi pilgrim town, in AP.
The blazing coach was detached from the vestibule train soon after passengers noticed flames leaping out of it and the train was suddenly stopped. Some of the survivors jumped out of the burning coach after breaking window panes of its toilets. Railway Minister Mallikharjuna Kharge ordered an inquiry by the commissioner of railway safety (southern circle) and announced Rs 5-lakh ex gratia to the kin of the victims. He assured the injured that their treatment expenses would be met by the railways.
This is the second train incident in the district. In the previous incident on May 25, 2012, passengers were killed when the Bangalore-bound Hampi Express from Hubli in north Karnataka rammed into a stationary freight train near Penukonda in the district after its driver overshot the signal near the station.