New Delhi: The South Eastern Railway (SER) has debunked claims that a signal junior engineer named Amir Khan absconded after the Balasore train crash took place.
Aditya Kumar Chaudhary, chief public relations officer for the SER, referred to recent media reports alleging that Khan’s home was sealed by the police after he absconded with his family.
“Such reports are not factually correct. All staff are … present and part of the inquiry. They are reaching wherever the CBI and CRS [Commissioner of Railway Safety] are asking them to,” he said in a statement posted on Twitter.
It is to be clarified none of the staff involved in the ongoing query are missing or absconding.
-CPRO/SER pic.twitter.com/il4GRn2WrA— Spokesperson Railways (@SpokespersonIR) June 20, 2023
This is not the first time misinformation has spread about the crash.
A few days after the crash, some people falsely claimed that the station master of the Bahanaga Bazar railway station – near which the crash took place – was named ‘Sharif’ and that he too was absconding.
S.B. Mohanty, the actual station master, was cooperating with authorities.
Claims that the rail disaster took place next to a mosque were also circulated. However, the structure many referred to as a mosque actually turned out to be an ISKCON temple.
The CBI began its probe of the train crash, which involved three trains and killed 292 people, on June 6 after the Union government claimed sabotage could have caused the deadly accident.