The Odisha triple train tragedy has claimed at least 261 lives so far as per official figures, and over 900 people are estimated to have suffered injuries. The accident happened when the Coromandel Express from Shalimar to Chennai first collided with a goods train, some of its coaches derailed and fell onto an adjacent track, and a third train — the Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express — then collided with these derailed coaches. The Union government has announced a high-level probe into the incident, which is unfolding as one of the worst train accidents in India, with the death toll expected to rise even higher.
Like the triple train tragedy in Odisha, India has witnessed many deadly train accidents over the years including the 1999 Gaisal train accident in Assam, the 2000 Howrah train mishap in Punjab, and the 2001 Kadalundi train disaster in Kerala. But Friday’s train accident in Odisha’s Balasore eerily mirrored the Khanna rail disaster of 1998, in which derailed coaches of a train collided with another train on an adjacent track, resulting in the death of over 200 people. The two trains were estimated to have carried around 2,500 passengers in total. While the initial derailment in the Balasore accident was caused by a collision with a goods train, in the Khanna disaster, the first train's derailment was reportedly the result of a breakage in a hook joining two coaches.
According to initial information available on the Balasore triple train accident which occurred near the Bahanaga Bazar railway station, the Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express first collided with a goods train around 7 pm, and 10-12 of its derailed coaches fell on the adjacent track. Sometime later, another train going from Bengaluru to Howrah which was running four hours late is believed to have crashed into those derailed coaches, resulting in three of its own coaches skidding off the track. As some of the derailed coaches were unreserved, the identity of several passengers is yet to be ascertained.
About a week after the 1998 Khanna train accident, on December 2 that year, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who was then the Union Railways Minister, gave a statement in the Lok Sabha explaining how the tragedy unfolded.
On November 26, 1998, at around 3 am, a few minutes after passing Khanna city in Punjab, nine coaches (coaches 10 to 18) of the Mumbai-Amritsar Golden Temple Mail moving along the upline derailed. The front of the train including its first nine coaches halted one kilometer from the site of the derailment on the same line, while three of the derailed coaches (coaches 14 to 16) fell on the down line on the Northern Railway’s Ambala-Ludhiana section, creating an obstruction. The train had been running 50 minutes behind schedule when it derailed.
Just a few moments later, the Jammu Tawi-Sealdah Express moving along the down line (which was running late by 18 minutes) collided with the three derailed coaches of the Golden Temple Mail. As a result, the engine and first seven coaches of the former were also derailed, some of them becoming completely mangled. The driver and assistant driver of Jammu Tawi-Sealdah Express died in the accident. A total of 209 passengers died in the accident, while 140 passengers were injured, Nitish Kumar had said at the time.
In Friday’s accident in Odisha, the official death toll stood at 261 as of Saturday afternoon, but Odisha Chief Secretary Pradeep Kumar Jena had previously said that more bodies were likely to be found. “We are using machines to cut into the coaches and extricate people from it,” he said. Bodies from a damaged bogie, still lying on the track were yet to be recovered as of Saturday afternoon.
Both the Balasore and Khanna disasters were rendered even more tragic by the various accounts of mutilated limbs and other body parts of the victims. “When I made it out of the bogie, I saw people lying around whose body parts had been severed, and people with disfigured faces,” remarked one survivor of the Odisha accident. An article in The Tribune from November 1998 mentions how a victim trapped in the wreckage at Khanna had repeatedly asked rescue workers to amputate both his legs to rescue him.
The then Union Railways Minister Nitish Kumar announced an ex-gratia amount of Rs 25,000 for families of those who died in the Khanna disaster, Rs 5,000 to the grievously injured and Rs 2,000 to those who sustained simple injuries.
Nitish Kumar had said at the time that while serious train accidents are usually probed by the Commissioner of Railway Safety, considering the gravity of the Khanna rail disaster, a judicial inquiry was initiated under the Commissions of Inquiry Act. He continued as Railways Minister for a few more months, before resigning over another major train accident — the August 1999 Gaisal train disaster in Assam that killed 290 people.
Justice GC Garg, a sitting judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court at the time, was appointed by the Ministry of Railways to head the one-man judicial commission of inquiry into the Khanna accident, set up in March 1999. The commission was tasked with conducting an enquiry “with respect to the causes of the accident and the person or persons, if any, responsible for the said accident…[and] suggest safeguards for the prevention of similar accidents in future.”
Although the commission was asked to submit its report within four months, it was submitted nearly five years later in July 2004. A railway board notice from October 2004 related to management of train accidents mentions that aside from general guidelines on what was to follow in cases of derailment, the Justice GC Garg Commission’s report also instructed the Railway Board to “issue instructions to all concerned that disciplinary proceedings will be initiated against such employees/officers, who are found negligent or fail to discharge their duties relating to an accident as per the rules/instructions modified from time to time."
Thirteen years after the report was submitted, it was still officially “under consideration,” according to a 2017 report in Outlook. The reports also mentions that the official who was in charge of the track directorate, which was held primarily responsible for the derailment, had retired as Chairman of the Railway Board with no serious consequences.