Bhubaneswar: In two miraculous incidents in the triple train accident in Odisha’s Balasore district on Friday, a man found his son alive among dead bodies and a man was rescued 48 hours after the incident.
As per reports, 24-year-old Biswajit Mallik had boarded Coromandel Express at Shalimar station in West Bengal on the fateful day. His father Helaram Mallik had come to the station to see him off. After the train left the station, Helaram returned to Howrah to open his shop. Later, he came to know about the accident involving Coromandel at Bahanaga Bazar station in Balasore district.
As Helaram called his son on the latter’s mobile phone number, Biswajit told him in a faint and weak voice that he was alive but under great pain. Helaram along with one of his relatives Dipak Das immediately left for Balasore.
On reaching Balasore the same night, they went to all the hospitals where the passengers, injured in the accident, were undergoing treatment. But they could not find Biswajit.
“Though we were feeling frustrated and depressed, Helaram had not given up home and was optimistic that his son was alive. While we were telling the officials about Biswajit in Balasore, some locals suggested us to look in the high school at Bahanaga where the dead bodies were kept,” Dipak told Hindustan Times.
“When we reached the high school, we were not allowed to go inside the campus. After some time, somebody said a man among the dead bodies was moving his hands. Helaram recognised that those hands were of Biswajit,” he added.
With the help of the officials present there, they managed to take Biswajit to a local hospital where the doctors administered an injection and referred him to SCB Medical College and Hospital at Cuttack. “But we obtained the discharge certificate from the hospital and after signing a bond, took Biswajit in an ambulance to Kolkata where we admitted him in SSKM Hospital on Saturday morning,” said Das.
Biswajit is undergoing treatment at trauma care unit in the hospital and has undergone operations in a foot. He has sustained fractures in another leg and right hand. He will remain in the hospital for further surgery but his condition was stable, Das said.
In the other incident, 35-year-old Dulai Mazumdar, a resident of Assam, was also travelling in the Coromandel Express. When the train met with the accident, he was thrown out of the train and landed around 200 metre away.
Since Mazumdar was lying unconscious far away from the accident spot, he was not spotted by the rescue team or the locals. Luckily, Soro police found him on Sunday night and admitted him to district headquarters hospital hospital at Balasore.
According to latest updates, 1,009 of 1,207 admitted to different government and private hospitals have been discharged. Among the remaining 198, one patient is under critical care. Among the dead, 170 bodies have so far been identified and the state government is making arrangements for free transportation by hearses/dead body carriers till destination.
