Nine tourists from Uttar Pradesh, including four women, were charred to death early on Saturday morning, after a fire broke out in their privately-booked railway coach, stabled near Madurai Railway junction. An initial probe indicated that a gas leak from an LPG cylinder, used to make tea inside the coach, had triggered the fire around 5:30 a.m, while many of the tourists were still asleep.
Eight people who were injured in the incident have been admitted to the Railway Hospital and Government Rajaji Hospital in Madurai.
The deceased, ranging in age from 20-year-old Deepak Kashyap to 82-year-old Manorama Agarwal, were among a group of 55 tourists and eight support staff travelling together. According to Madurai Divisional Railway Manager P. Anant, a tour operator had booked the sleeper class coach, which left Lucknow on August 17, and had then been attached to different trains enroute to several tourist destinations. They were scheduled to visit Madurai’s famed Meenakshi temple on Saturday, and return home on August 29.
After visiting Kanyakumari and the Padmanabhapuram Palace on Friday, the coach had been attached to the Punalur-Madurai Express. The train arrived at Madurai junction on Saturday morning and this privately-booked coach was then left in the stabling line on the Bodinayackanur track, about 800 metres south of the junction, Mr. Anant said.
The fire call was received around 5:45 a.m, according to the Fire and Rescue Services Department deputy director Vijay Kumar.
‘Locked from inside’
The Divisional Railway Manager said that since the doors of the coach were locked from inside with additional padlocks, the tourists and support staff had been trapped inside the coach. “Since no one knew who had the keys, they had to break open the lock to escape,” Mr. Anant said. By then, some of them had suffered serious burn injurious.
Dev Narayan Srivastava, 67, a tourist from Ayodhya travelling in the coach, said that while some of his fellow tourists were still sleeping, others had woken up by the time the coach was berthed at the stabling line. “When the fire broke out, there was a commotion and everybody tried to come out. However, the doors were locked from inside. People used a wrench to break open the lock and all of us could escape only through one door after some 10 minutes,” he said.
A fire fighter said that the high compound walls on both sides of the stabling line had also prevented the tenders from getting closer to the coach. A few utensils — including pressure cookers, plastic drums, and slightly mangled cooking gas cylinders — were found lying outside the coach after the fire was put out.
₹3 lakh ex-gratia
The deceased were identified as Hemani Bansal, 22, Shanthi Devi, 57, Ankul Kashyap, 36, Manorama Agarwal, 82, Parameshwar Dayal Gupta, 55, Mithilesh Kumari, 62, Harish Kumar Bhasin, 60, Deepak Kashyap, 20, and Satur Daman Singh, 65, according to Madurai Collector M.S. Sangeetha. Postmortem and embalming of the bodies of the deceased is underway at the Government Rajaji hospital in Madurai.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin announced an ex-gratia of ₹3 lakh for each of the families of those killed in the incident and expressed his condolences.
Tamil Nadu Minister for Commercial Taxes P. Moorthi rushed to the spot, along with Ms. Sangeetha, Mr. Anant, and senior officials from the police, fire and rescue services.
‘Accidental fire’
Superintendent of Police (TN Railways) T. Senthil Kumar said that a case of accidental fire would be filed. A gas cylinder has been taken from the spot. After getting forensic report, the next course of action will be decided, he said.
Revenue officers took all the survivors to a hall in the railway station and provided them food and accommodation. A team of officials led by Madurai Corporation Commissioner K. J. Praveen Kumar has been trying to identify all the tourists and support staff who had travelled in the coach.
All the bodies will be taken to Chennai by train on Saturday night and then flown to Lucknow by special flight on Sunday. The survivors will be shifted to hotels on Saturday and will also be flown to Lucknow by Sunday, Southern Railway General Manager R.N. Singh said.
