Police in the Indian state of Odisha have registered a criminal case of “death by negligence” relating to the train crash on Friday that killed 275 people, as critics accused the government of trying to shift blame for the disaster.
The report filed by police did not name any specific person as being responsible but stated that “culpability of specific railway employees has not been ascertained, which will be unearthed during the investigation”.
According to preliminary reports, a signal failure led the Coromandel Express train to switch tracks from the main line on to the loop line on Friday evening, where a stationary freight train was filled with heavy iron ore.
The trains collided at such force that carriages from the express, which was carrying more than 1,200 passengers, flipped on to the opposite tracks and derailed the oncoming Howrah superfast express train, with devastating consequences.
A rescue operation involving the national disaster response force and hundreds of volunteers spent two days pulling survivors and bodies from the wreckage. Since then, relatives have struggled to locate the bodies of their loved ones, many of whom were badly disfigured. More than 100 bodies have yet to be identified.
There were fears the death toll could continue to rise, with more than 300 of the 1,175 injured still in hospital, some in a serious condition.
By Monday, passenger and freight trains had resumed service along the route where the collision occurred, one of the oldest and busiest lines in India, with netting placed over the mangled carriages still lying by the tracks to shield them from the view of passengers.
The railways minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, and members of the railway board said the investigation was focusing on a failure of the track management system, which automatically coordinates and controls the signals for oncoming trains and is meant to ensure they are always directed to empty tracks.
It appeared this automatic “interlocking system” had malfunctioned on Friday, sending the Coromandel Express train down the loop track. Vaishnaw, who is facing calls to resign, said the “root cause and the people responsible for the criminal act” had been determined but he would not say if the failure was caused by a technical fault, human error or sabotage.
The signalling system is used across India’s entire 40,000-mile network. On Monday, the railway board ordered a widespread examination of the system, with all 19 zones across the country required to submit safety reports by next week.
The government also requested that the central bureau of investigation (CBI), a government agency, begin a criminal investigation into the collision, an indication that arrests could be made. A CBI team travelled to the site on Monday evening, seeking to establish if any criminal tampering was involved in the signal failure.
Visiting the site on Saturday, the prime minister, Narendra Modi, said: “Those found guilty will be severely punished”.
The commissioner of railway safety has also launched an investigation, and a report is expected within two weeks. The chair of the railway board will brief the prime minister and top officials on developments in the investigation on Tuesday.
Political opponents accused the Modi government of trying to shift focus on to an investigation into criminal negligence by an individual, rather than shouldering responsibility for the disaster and examining endemic safety issues on the railway network.
It emerged that a similar incident, involving a failure of the interlocking system, had taken place in the state of Karnataka in February but the driver had noticed in time and stopped the train before it was sent down the wrong track, narrowly avoiding a crash.
The principal chief operations manager of south western railway had raised concerns over the failure at the time. In an internal letter sent to the railways minister, he warned there were “serious flaws in the system” and said “immediate corrective measures are required to rectify the system faults and sensitising the staff for not venturing into shortcuts leading to major mishap”.
The railways continue to be a lifeline in India, carrying around 13 million passengers a day. In recent years, the government has spent billions modernising India’s colonial-era railways, including introducing of superfast trains, but spending on maintenance and basic safety measures and upgrades has been falling, and a lack of staff has meant allocated funds for track upgrades have not been spent.
On Monday morning, another freight train, carrying limestone, derailed in Odisha, though no one was injured.
Mallikarjun Kharge, the president of the opposition Congress party, accused the government of “apathy and negligence” over rail safety, alleging that “red flags” were ignored, and questioning why a criminal investigation agency was looking into the incident. “The CBI is meant to investigate crimes, not railway accidents,” said Kharge.
King Charles sent a letter to the Indian president, Droupadi Murmu, on Monday offering his condolences over the disaster. “Both my wife and I have been most profoundly shocked and saddened by the news of such a dreadful accident outside Balasore,” he wrote. “I have particularly fond memories of visiting Odisha in 1980 and meeting some of its people on that occasion.”
