Train Derailment Toll Soars upto 98

The toll in yesterday’s train mishap triggered by Maoists has soared up to 98 as more bodies were pulled out of the wreckage of the mangled coaches following rescue work running the whole night, said media reports.

According to South East Railways officials, nearly 250 passengers are injured, five of them seriously, who have been shifted to Kolkata for medication, reports said.

“Ninety-eight bodies have so far been taken out from the mangled coaches. 96 bodies have been kept at the Midnapore Hospital and two at the Kharagpur Railway Hospital,” SP, West Midnapore, Manoj Kumar Verma was quoted as saying.

Out of 98 dead, only 25 could be identified so far while postmortem has been conducted on 60 bodies, said reports.

In the meanwhile, officials said that toll could rise further because two worst affected coaches S-5 and S-6 were still to be cut open, reports said.

They said that more bodies could be inside the two mangled coaches as also under the engine of four wagons of the goods train, said reports.

Maoists derailed the Howrah-Kurla Lomanya Tilak Gyaneshwari Super Deluxe Express yesterday when the train was running between Khemasoli and Sardiya stations.

Vermas said that preservation of bodies was being done in a way that a DNA test could be conducted on them if need arose, reports said.

“Two temporary camps have been set up at the Midnapore Hospital where relatives of the dead and injured can get information. Besides displaying the photographs of the dead at the hospital, officials have uploaded them on government websites for the convenience of the affected families,” Verma was quoted as saying.

The Midnapore Medical College and Hospital, where all the bodies have been kept, is facing a space crunch as its morgue is not equipped to handle such a large number of cadavers, reports said.

A garage of the hospital has been turned into a makeshift morgue with the bodies being kept on slabs of ice, said reports.

“The summer heat, however, is proving to be a problem,” hospital officials were quoted as saying by PTI.

The hospital authorities have placed a large LCD screen where the images of the bodies were being displayed to help relatives identify them, reports said.

(Based on internet reports)