"We woke up to burning sensation", recount survivors

"We were all in sleep...All of a sudden, we all woke up to a burning sensation," said a survivor, who played a good samaritan to help three fellow passengers escape but lost his wife and uncle in the Bangalore-Nanded Express train fire tragedy.

"There were five of us. We were all sleeping.. And all of a sudden, we all woke up to a burning sensation... There was chaos... We realised that the bogie was burning," Sharad said while recollecting the horrific experience.

He said he helped in breaking open the glass pane of a toilet cabin that enabled three others to escape.

"...but I could not save my wife and maternal uncle," he said, weeping inconsolably.

Another survivor Patil, who was travelling with his father said, "We woke up to the screams of fire fire... Everybody was screaming."

He said they managed to come out of the train and walked a little distance in pitch darkness to a highway, from where they took a bus to Penukonda. From there, they boarded another train and reached Bangalore. "It is as if we have got a second birth," said Patil in Bangalore.