Odisha train accident: CBI arrests three railway officials
In one of the worst train accidents in India, 293 passengers died after three trains collided on June 2.
The Central Bureau of Investigation Friday arrested three persons in connection with the train accident in Odisha’s Balasore that claimed at least 293 lives, PTI reported.
Those arrested have been identified as senior section engineer Arun Kumar Mahanta, section engineer Mohammad Amir Khan and technician Pappu Kumar.
The investigating agency said that the accused have been arrested under Sections 304 (culpable homicide) and 201 (destruction of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code for “their action which led to the incident”, the Hindustan Times reported. The agency, however, did not state what these actions were.
On June 2, one of India’s deadliest rail crashes occurred in Balasore when two coaches of the Yesvantpur-Howrah Express derailed near the Bahanaga Road railway station. The derailed coaches came in the path of the speeding Coromandel Express on the adjoining track and collided with it. A goods train was also hit in the process. More than 900 people were injured.
In his report submitted to the Railway Board last week, Commissioner of Railway Safety AM Chowdhary had said that the train accident occurred due to faulty signalling and botched repair works.
The first repair work was carried out in 2018, while the second was done just hours before the accident took place.
Chowdhary said that wires inside a location box were wrongly labelled and the error remained undetected for years, ultimately leading to a mix-up during the repair work.
The probe found that a wiring diagram – meant to guide technicians on how the wiring is to be reconnected after maintenance work – was changed on paper and duly approved as early as 2015, but was not corrected physically.