How many more Dibrugarh Expresses must we face before we wake up?

As one more headless body is found in one of the compartments of the derailed Dibrugarh Express train on Friday morning, the death toll in the accident has climbed to four. Alok Kumar, Additional District Magistrate, Gonda, said that among the six seriously injured people, the condition of four is now stable and they are out of danger.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you would know that on Thursday afternoon, eight compartments of the Assam-bound Dibrugarh Express train got derailed. A team of the State Disaster Response Force was dispatched along with medical teams, and special arrangements were made to ensure surviving passengers reached their destinations. Chief Public Relations Officer of North Eastern Railway, Pankaj Singh, also said that in addition to a Commission of Railway Safety inquiry, a high-level inquiry has also been ordered into the derailment.

But how many more of these tragedies must the common man suffer, and must we become inured to the pain?

Just another tragedy on the tracks

Do you happen to remember the Kanchanjunga Express, which derailed a little more than a month ago? Perhaps not, since public memory is so short. The preliminary accident report, which came out on 17^th July, saw the Chief Commissioner of Railway Safety make a damning statement, saying it was an “accident-in waiting”.

The Chairman, Railway Board & CEO, Jaya Varma Sinha pinned it on human error in an interview, claiming that the goods train had “disregarded” the signal resulting in the accident.

But the murky truth is that the signal system in the area had malfunctioned. This can been in the T/A 912 memo that had been issued, which read: “Automatic signalling has failed & you are hereby authorised to pass all automatic signals between RNI station and CAT station”.

Regardless, the Railways GRP registered an FIR against the loco pilot & the co loco pilot based on a complaint filed by a passenger named Chaitali Majumdar, forwarded by Railways. Remarkably, the passenger herself later vehemently opposed this, in what can only be construed as an “anyone, but us” mentality when it comes to taking responsibility.

Finally, in the interim report, CCRS Janak Kumar Garg said the accident came under the “error in train working” category. After examining the evidence & statements, he stated that the accident “occurred due to lapses at multiple levels in managing the train operations under automatic signal failures”.

The Dibrugarh derailment has seen 4 people perish, and many more get injured, but there is yet to be any accountability or sense of responsibility from Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw from this, as has been the case for some time now.

A history of neglect

There have been a slew of train accidents in recent months and years, indicating that the investments in India’s railways system are insufficient. The much-talked about Kavach anti-collision might have helped, if it had been deployed across India. But bizarrely, the Mumbai Ahmedabad bullet train project (costing ₹1,08,000 crores) has taken precedence. Here are just some of the major train accidents that have occurred in India over the past 3 years: 

• July 2024: Hazarduari Express collides with two cars at Bengal railway crossing
• A passenger train collided with two cars at Khardah Railway Station on last Sunday night, narrowly escaping a major accident.
• June 2024: Kanchanjunga Express accident in West Bengal
• At least 10 people were killed and a minimum of 40 injured after the Sealdah-bound Kanchanjunga Express from Agartala was hit by a goods train from the rear in West Bengal’s Darjeeling district, 11 km from New Jalpaiguri station.
• June 2023: Balasore Coromandel train collision in Odisha
• Three trains – Shalimar-Chennai Central Coromandel Express, Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express and a goods train – were involved in a pile-up, which was described as one of India’s worst train accidents, in which 293 people lost their lives.
• October 2023: Visakhapatnam-Palasa passenger train in Andhra Pradesh
• A train collision between the Visakhapatnam-Palasa passenger train and the Visakhapatnam-Rayagada passenger train in Andhra Pradesh left 14 passengers dead.
• October 2023: Bihar North-East Express
• Six coaches of the 12506 Anand Vihar Terminal-Kamakhya Junction North East Express derailed near Buxar’s Raghunathpur Railway Station in Bihar, leading to four people losing their lives, while over 70 were injured.
• January 2022: Bikaner-Guwahati Express The derailment of the Bikaner-Guwahati Express in West Bengal’s Alipurduar district left 9 people dead and 36 injured.
  
  How many more Dibrugarh’s must we go through before our collective conscience and a sense of official responsibility awakens?