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Crash survivors recount harrowing tales

As the special train carrying survivors of Monday's train crash at Gaisal in West Bengal reached Delhi early this morning, sepoy S N Sinha anxiously scanned the bogies, not quite sure whether his mother would be in any of them.

For the past two days Sinha, who serves in the Army Service Corps, had no clue about whether his mother and maternal uncle, who were travelling by the ill-fated Brahmaputra Mail which collided head-on with the Avadh-Assam Express in the wee hours of Monday, were alive or not. He had come to the station with only a faint hope of seeing his mother alive.

''Ever since the news of the accident trickled in, I was completely resigned to fate,'' he said standing beside his sobbing mother and uncle who were among the 20 survivors to reach Delhi.

With bruises all over her body, Sinha's mother Shyama Devi found it difficult to control her tears, even as relief at being reunited with her son mingled with overwhelming trauma at what she had been through.

Sinha's uncle Maina Singh was still praying for having escaped certain death after his bogie was crushed due to the devastating impact. Recounting the horrific experience, he said, ''We are alive today because we were awake at the time of the crash. In our bogie a majority of the passengers were either killed or seriously injured.''

''Though we managed to squeeze our way out through an opening, we were greeted by only rain and darkness amid shrieks and wails all around. The first medical aid and recovery van came only around 0700 hours, five hours after the accident,'' said Maina Singh who suffered injuries on his chest and temple.

Deepak Singh Mehra, an army jawan heading for Kargil, found the conduct of the Railway Protection Force personnel very agonising as he saw them taking away the wallets of the injured. ''The victims were screaming for help, but these personnel remained insensitive... One of the victims whom the policemen had presumed dead did try to resist but was kicked by them,'' he revealed.

Following the impact, Mehra's S-1 coach was perched atop three bogies. ''Initially we thought it was an explosion that had thrown our bogie up. Our bogie was hanging precariously and but for the timely help provided by a few truckers, it would have been difficult to escape to safety,'' he said.

The truckers provided ropes for the passengers to slither down. ''Barely half-an-hour after we came down, the coach was burnt down in a fire that engulfed quite a few coaches of the train.''

According to the survivors, the first to arrive at the accident spot were the Border Security Force personnel from their nearby camp after receiving intimation from the truckers. The truckers also intimated the local police and fire brigade.

Havaldar S K Tiwari said it was by accident that he was on board the Brahmaputra Mail. He was travelling by the Tinsukia Mail which was terminated after militants blew up a bridge at Barpeta. He then boarded the Brahmaputra Mail at New Jalpaiguri.

''Fire brigade personnel were of little help as they were not equipped with gas cutters to rescue the injured and retrieve the dead from the mangled remains of the affected coaches,'' he complained.

It took the brothers Bare Gali and Faizul Haq more than half-an-hour to extricate their 17-year-old sister Jaigan alive from their bogie in the Brahmaputra Mail.

Most of the survivors complained of delay in the arrival of medical teams. ''Otherwise many more lives could have been saved,'' felt Hathiar Singh, who was at the station to receive a friend.

Hathiar Singh's was one of the few families that escaped with only minor injuries. He was travelling with his wife and three children and they were the first ones to reach the capital yesterday.

Among the 20 survivors who reached New Delhi, there were two women and a child. Immediately on arrival, all the survivors were taken to a special counter for a medical check-up. One of them, Jaigal, with injuries on the chest was referred to the Northern Railway Central Hospital.

UNI

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