Siliguri: The death toll from the June 17 Kanchanjunga Express train accident has reached 10 and 40 injured individuals are still undergoing treatment at the North Bengal Medical College. The Railway authorities’ response in the aftermath of the incident has been marked by attempts to deflect blame and scant regard of its own mismanagement.
Soon after the accident, the Railway Board chairperson Jaya Varma Sinha blamed the driver of the goods train which rammed into the Kanchanjunga Express for allegedly ignoring a signal. It is noteworthy that the driver is among the 10 who have died in the incident.
‘Complaint from hospitalised passenger’
The Government Railway Police filed a first information report based on a formal complaint by one Chaitali Majumdar, a passenger who occupied the seat number 13 in coach S6 of the Kanchanjunga Express. Majumdar’s complaint alleges negligent conduct by the loco pilot and co-pilot of the goods train. However, Majumdar has now said that she did not lodge any complaints against the two, and has claimed that GRP officials coerced her into signing on a blank paper.
“I was hospitalised after the accident and have now returned home. I did not file any complaints against the deceased driver. Why would I do so?” she asked reporters.
The incident suggests a deliberate effort to shift responsibility away from systemic failures.
The accused goods train driver, Anil Kumar, died at the scene. His the assistant driver, Manu Kumar, is receiving treatment at a nursing home.
Railway staff, angered by the authorities taking a deceased worker to task before even launching an investigation, have questioned the plausibility of such a complaint in the first place. Many have asked as to how an injured passenger on the Kanchanjunga Express could have known – let alone alleged – that a goods train was speeding and ignoring signals.
According to sources in the Railways, the accident occurred in an automatic signal zone. To drive a train in that area, loco pilots need to undergo hands-on training sessions with the chief loco inspector. No training had taken place in the last six months. Instead, instructions were merely sent as PDF files to the drivers’ mobile phones, sources said.
A train driver from the Northeast Frontier Railway, preferring anonymity, told The Wire, “Reading a PDF and learning hands-on are entirely different experiences. However, we have no choice but to follow higher authorities’ orders.”
On June 17, the signal system in the area malfunctioned for almost six hours.
More than one railway worker told this reporter that since the automatic signal system was malfunctioning, a TA912 memo had been issued but this memo lacked speed control guidelines.
The memo read: “Automatic signalling has failed and you are hereby authorised to pass all automatic signals between RNI (Rangapani Railway Station) and CAT (Chattar Hat Junction).”
The memo on the signal. Photo: By arrangement.
According to Railway sources, the maintenance of the railway signal system had been outsourced to a private organisation for 13 years. The organisation is responsible for managing any malfunction, either directly or through other agencies.
Veteran railway worker Akhil Prakash Singh compared the railway system to the human body, where all departments are interconnected. “The privatisation has led to a lack of coordination. The root cause of the accident was possibly the failure of the auto-signalling system, maintained by a private company, yet the blame falls on railway workers,” Singh explained.
Overwork
Meanwhile, Railway workers unions have pointed to the fact that the deceased loco-pilot Anil Kumar had been on continuous duty for four days and nights. He had been asleep at the New Jalpaiguri station running room when he was awakened at 2:30 am to drive the goods train. Kumar allegedly expressed inability to drive, but was forced to take charge at 6:40 am.
“A Karnataka high court ruling states that a train driver should work a maximum of 10 hours and rest for at least 16 hours before operating an express train. Anil Kumar, however, was forced to work continuously without adequate rest, and now all the blame is placed on the deceased employee. The shortage of trained staff, long recruitment freezes, and the trend of privatising the railways cannot be ignored as contributing factors to this accident,” said Amit Kumar Ghosh, secretary of the All India Railwaymen’s Federation (Eastern Railway Men’s Union).
The Wire reached out to the Chief Public Relations Officer of North Frontier Railway. He responded, “Not sure. Please wait for the CRS inquiry to get over. We will get all the facts after that.”
Railway workers allege that to avoid accountability, railway authorities are making contradictory statements and blaming employees.
Railway unions accuse the Union government of spending Rs 20,400 crore on the Amrit Bharat Project to beautify railway stations and add selfie zones with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cut-outs. They say safety has been repeatedly ignored. They argue that leasing important railway sectors to private companies saves costs compared to training employees, putting the lives of railway workers and passengers at risk.
In September last year, a major disaster was narrowly averted on the Tripura-bound Kanchanjunga Express when a 10-year-old boy, Mursalim Ali, noticed washed-away soil and pebbles under the tracks near Malda in Bengal and alerted the loco pilot, who promptly applied the emergency brakes.
Translated from the original Bengali and with inputs by Aparna Bhattacharya.