Utterly horrendous disaster in every sense, regardless of what the actual cause(s) turns out to be.
I'm well aware that India has a dark and blood-soaked history when it comes to rail disasters and that it lags well behind most of Europe and Asia when it comes to safety and regard for human life generally speaking, it's still hard to get a handle on such a high death toll resulting from a train accident in 2023. My condolences and thoughts are obviously with the victims and their families, the traumatized survivors and the rescue workers who will have no doubt seen and heard some truly hellish things during their efforts.
I think this makes it possibly the second worst train disaster in India after the one that killed 800?
3rd worst, as of me typing this. The Firozabad disaster of August 1995 is the second worst, with 358 confirmed deaths, though it should be noted that some sources push the death toll there up to beyond 400.
The Bihar accident in June 1981 (the accident the bolded part of the quoted text is referring to) had a official government death toll of 235 stamped on it as that was the number of bodies recovered from the Bagmati River that the train had plunged into, but estimates on the actual death toll range anywhere between 500 and beyond 800 and that most bodies had been swept away by the river before rescue/recovery operations could begin.
Given the relative lack of documentation of that accident (it's direct cause is contested, a cyclone, flash flooding and a brake failure have all been put forward), I can't say with any certainty the actual precise number of lives lost at Bihar, but what I
can say is that 235 seems like a conservative figure to say the least given the number of people on board the train relative to the number of bodies that were pulled from the river.
(the fact that 235 is considered to be the
conservative figure there really does put a cold chill up my back, as that figure eclipses Quintinshill's death toll by 9)
www.express.co.uk
