Bhubaneswar: By the grace of God, the drivers and guards of Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express and Yeshvanthpur-Howrah Superfast Express are alive and stable, undergoing treatment in different hospitals.
On Friday evening, the Coromandel Express entered the loop line, rammed into a goods train and got derailed with several compartments being flung to the adjacent Down line. A few minutes later, the Howrah-bound Superfast Express arrived there and crashed into Coromandel bogies.
According to Rajesh Kumar, Senior Divisional Commercial Manager of Kharagpur division of South Eastern Railway (SER), the list of injured includes locomotive pilots, assistant locomotive pilot and guard of the Coromandel Express, and also the driver and guard of Howrah-Yeshvanthpur Superfast Express.
Coromandel engine driver Gunanidhi Mohanty and his assistant Hajari Behera are undergoing treatment at AIIMS Bhubaneswar.
“Both drivers are stable. While Mohanty was taken out of the ICU on Monday, Behera is awaiting a head surgery,” SER’s Chief Public Relations Officer (CPRO) Aditya Choudhury said.
Families of the drivers have appealed for privacy, to allow them to recover physically and mentally from the traumatic experience.
As many as 275 people lost their lives and around 1,000 were injured in the triple-train accident.
In the preliminary findings of Railway Board’s probe, the Coromandel Express was not over-speeding and received green signal to enter a loop line where a goods train was stationary. The Board has virtually given a clean chit to the loco pilot of Coromandel, saying that the accident was due to a signal malfunction.
The driver of Yeshvanthpur-Howrah Express claimed to have heard an unusual sound prior to the accident.
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