New Delhi
A.P
–
At least 12 passengers of a train in western India were killed Wednesday after being hit by another train on an adjacent track when they jumped from their bogies to avoid the wreckage, the Press Trust of India reported.
At least six other people were injured, the news agency quoted police officer Dattatraya Karale as saying.
The accident took place in Jalgaon, one of Maharashtra’s largest cities, near Pradhade railway station, 410 km (255 mi) northeast of India’s financial capital Mumbai.
The victims jumped off the Pushpak Express train, which had stopped after some passengers pulled the emergency chain, PTI said. PTI quoted railway spokesperson Swapnal Nila as saying that the people who were getting off collided with another express train on the adjacent railway track.
“Our initial information is that ‘hot axle’ or ‘brake binding’ (jamming) caused sparks inside one coach of Pushpak Express and some passengers panicked. They pulled the chain, and some of them on the tracks. jumped in. At the same time, the Karnataka Express was passing on the adjacent track,” a senior railway official told PTI.
Despite government efforts to improve rail safety, hundreds of accidents occur every year on India’s railways, the largest single-management train network in the world.
In 2023, two passenger trains collided after a derailment in eastern India, killing more than 280 people and injuring hundreds in one of the country’s deadliest rail accidents in decades.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is focusing on modernizing the British colonial-era railroad network in India, which has become the world’s most populous nation with 1.42 billion people.
