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Train operators told to spot and report to avoid deaths
The incident brings into focus the desperation of hundreds of thousands of people who migrated to work from some of India’s most impoverished villages and towns to industrial hot spots and urban centres.
A group of factory workers on a 36-hour journey by foot in Maharashtra to catch transport back to their hometown in Madhya Pradesh, fell asleep exhausted after walking along the tracks since they thought there would be no trains running, the safety regulator of the railways said on Friday, calling for new protocols for engineers and field staff to report any instance of people walking on tracks so that other trains can be warned.
The victims were workers at a steel factory in Maharashtra’s Jalna. After covering 36km on Thursday, they slept on the railway tracks where they were run over in the early hours of Friday -- 16 of the 20 people in the group died on the spot, where images showed a trail of scattered luggage and food.
“Apparently, the affected persons had gathered along the track under the impression that train services have been suspended due to Covid-19 lockdown. Furthermore, false sense of security may have come to their minds about there being no trains running whereas freight, parcel specials have been running from before and now migrant specials have also started plying,” chief railway safety commissioner Shailesh Kumar Pathak said in a letter to railway board chairman Vinod Yadav.
HT has seen the letter.
The incident brings into focus the desperation of hundreds of thousands of people who migrated to work from some of India’s most impoverished villages and towns to industrial hot spots and urban centres, but now find themselves unemployed as the country remains shut down in order to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).
According to railway ministry officials, the locomotive pilot controlling the freight train tried to warn the victims when he spotted them using the train’s horn and tried to stop, but the people could not react in time and the train was not able to come to a stop.
The average speed of freight trains has risen from the approximately 24 km/hr usually to more than double now as passenger train services remain suspended due to the nationwide lockdown, decongesting the railway network.
A high-level inquiry headed by the Commissioner Railway Safety (South Central Circle) has been ordered to investigate the incident and arrive at the cause, the ministry said.
Railways minister Piyush Goyal said in a tweet on Friday that the ministry is closely monitoring the situation and is briefing him on the steps taken in this regard.
The safety commissioner said as a measure of abundant precaution, it is essential that all railway personnel connected with train operations, maintenance, and patrolling activities should immediately communicate if they spot persons walking along the track. This is so that “necessary action like caution order to all passing trains…may be taken,” the official added.
The safety commissioner has instructed that a ‘caution order’ be handed out to engineers to ensure special precautions. “A ‘Caution Order’ detailing the kilometres between which such precautions are necessary, the reasons for taking such precautions, and the speed at which a train shall travel, shall be handed to the Loco Pilot at the stopping station immediately short of the place where such precautions are necessary, or at such other stations and in such manner, as prescribed under special instructions,” the letter said.
According to a senior official, the railways does not consider accidents that happen due to external factors as ‘railway accidents’ and hence is not bound to provide ex gratia relief to the victim’s families. “It is provided only in accidents where the railway is involved such as derailment of trains etc,. In this case, states and the Centre are likely to provide the relief,” the official said.
