Following one of India's most devastating train accidents last month, which claimed the lives of over 290 individuals, three railway officials have been apprehended by the nation's federal crime agency. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) announced the arrests in a statement, charging the individuals with culpable homicide without murder and destruction of evidence. The accused, identified as two signal engineers and a technician, are currently under investigation, with further inquiries ongoing.
The tragic incident, which unfolded in Odisha state in June, involved a crowded passenger train being mistakenly routed onto a side track, leading to a collision with a stationary freight train carrying iron ore. The impact caused the passenger train's carriages to derail onto another track, where they struck a passing train traveling in the opposite direction. At the time of the collision, the two passenger trains were carrying over 2,290 passengers, resulting in nearly 1,000 injuries in addition to the fatalities.
Rescue operations underway at the site of the derailed passenger trains in Balasore district, Odisha, India, on June 3, 2023.
In the aftermath of the disaster, India's railway minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, attributed the cause of the crash to a fault in the signaling system. India's railway network, a legacy of the British colonial era, is one of the world's largest and most complex, spanning over 40,000 miles of track, 14,000 passenger trains, and 8,000 stations. While this vast network connects the nation from the Himalayas to its southern coast, it has also suffered from decades of mismanagement and neglect.
Despite ongoing efforts to enhance safety measures, several hundred accidents continue to plague the railway system annually, with the majority attributed to human error or obsolete signaling equipment. The June tragedy marks India's deadliest train accident since 1995, when a collision near New Delhi claimed 358 lives. Another significant incident occurred in 2016 when a passenger train derailed between Indore and Patna, resulting in 146 fatalities.
