India’s official investigation into the deadliest rail crash in 20 years has begun after preliminary findings point to a breakdown as the likely cause of a collision that killed at least 275 people and injured nearly 1,200.
Tragedy struck on Friday when a passenger train hit a stationary freight train, jumped off the rails and hit another passenger train passing in the opposite direction near Balasore district, eastern Odisha state.
After non-stop efforts to rescue survivors and clear and repair the track, passenger and freight trains resumed running on that section of the line on Sunday night.
Trains rumbled past the rubble of wrecked carriages from Friday night’s crash near Balasore.
Green mesh was placed on either side of the tracks to hide the crumpled carriages, which had been pushed down the embankment, from the view of traveling passengers.
Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw clasped his hands in prayer as he watched the first train pass the scene of the disaster late on Sunday.
The railway department said the first train, a freight train loaded with coal, started 51 hours after the crash.
It was not immediately clear whether all tracks had been fully repaired, with trains on Monday only using lines on one side.
“Trains must control their speed and travel slowly over a certain distance,” said a railway official.
Officials had initially reported the death toll as 288, but the Odisha government cut it to 275 on Sunday after some bodies were “wrongly counted twice”.
At least 382 injured people were still being treated in hospital, authorities said on Sunday. Many fear the death toll could rise as medical centers are overwhelmed by the number of casualties, many in serious condition.
There was confusion over the exact sequence of events on Friday, but reports quoted railway officials as saying that a signal error had sent the Coromandel Express traveling south from Kolkata to Chennai onto a siding.
It crashed into a freight train traveling at 128 km/h (80 mph) and the wreckage derailed the Yesvantpur-Howrah train traveling in the opposite direction from India’s engineering hub Bengaluru to Kolkata.
Vaishnaw said on Sunday the crash occurred as a result of the “change that occurred during electronic interlocking,” referring to a technical term for a complex signaling system designed to prevent trains from colliding by controlling their movement on the rails.
“Who did it and how it happened will be discovered after a thorough investigation,” he said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the crash site on Saturday and met injured passengers in hospital. He said “no one responsible” would be spared.
About 120 kilometers (75 miles) north, in Kharagpur, in the neighboring state of West Bengal, railway officials and witnesses gathered to submit evidence for a two-day investigation led by AM Chowdhary, commissioner of railway safety for the southeastern circle.
“Several officials and witnesses have joined the investigation. The investigation is ongoing,” a senior railway official told Reuters news agency, as officials checked documents submitted for investigation.
India’s Railway Board, the highest executive body, has recommended that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) take over the investigation into the cause of the disaster.
“We have to move towards normalization… Our responsibility is not over yet,” Vaishnaw told reporters.
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