The Indian authorities lowered this Sunday to 275 the number of deaths in the crash of three trains in the east of the country, compared to 288 in the last balancein which some of the bodies were counted twice due to the chaos unleashed in the worst rail accident of the 21st century in the Asian giant.
“After discarding the duplicates, the district chief has arrived at a final figure of 275 and not 288”Pradeep Jena, the secretary general of the eastern state of Odisha, where the incident took place last Friday, told the media.
“Yesterday, Railways said that finally the death toll was 288. Since last night, the district magistrate and his entire team have checked each and every corpse received (…) and discovered that some bodies had been counted twice,” Jena added.
The officer pointed out that At the moment, 88 bodies have been identified, while the authorities of the Asian country strive to facilitate the arrival of relatives. to the area of the event and to the capital of Odisha and uses the Internet to publish photographs of the still unrecognized corpses.
jena raised the number of injured in the accident to 1,175, and specified that almost 800 of these have received a medical discharge. The Indian Railways, in its latest casualty balance, indicated that at least 56 were in serious condition.
The accident took place at 7:20 p.m. local time (1:50 p.m. GMT) on Friday in the Balasore district when a passenger train entered a track occupied by a second parked freight train, colliding and derailing. At that time, another passenger railway passing through the station collided with both, Indian Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said during a press conference on Sunday.
The authorities announced compensation of more than $12,000 for the deceased, about $2,500 for the seriously injured, and $606 for those with minor injuries.
This is the worst rail accident to hit India in the 21st century, after the August 1999 collision of two trains in the northeastern state of West Bengal left 288 dead. Some 800 people died in 1981 when a train derailed while crossing a bridge and plunged into a river in the northern state of Bihar.
The Indian railway network is, with a length of 68,000 kilometers, the fourth in length in the world, behind the United States, Russia and China, it has some 21,650 trains and 7,349 stations throughout the country, and transports some 23 million passengers daily. passengers. EFE
