A freight train collided with a passenger train in eastern India on Monday, killing at least eight people and injuring 50 others, officials said.
The episode occurred at around 9 a.m. when the Kanchanjunga Express, which was carrying passengers to the state of West Bengal from the state of Tripura, was leaving the Rangapani station. Four coaches of the popular and often-crowded passenger train derailed when it was rammed from behind by the commercial train. Images from the accident site showed one of the passenger coaches lifted off the railway track and balancing on a coach of the freight train.
The death toll was likely to rise. Local news outlets, citing police officials, reported at least 15 people dead. The driver and the assistant driver of the freight train and a guard on the passenger train were among those killed.
Jaya Varma Sinha, the chairperson of India’s railway board, said rescue operations were completed. Ashwini Vaishnaw, India’s railway minister, was en route to the site.
The relatively low number of casualties could be attributed to the fact that the rear portion of the Kanchanjunga Express, which took the biggest impact from the collision, comprised cargo coaches and the guard’s coach. Passengers were in compartments far forward from the impact.
While an investigation has been ordered to look into the cause of the collision, Ms. Sinha said human error such as disregarding a railway signal could have caused the crash.
The accident again brings to the fore the issue of rail safety in a country whose millions of poor residents rely on railways for transport. India’s rail network is one of the world’s largest and is crucial to the country’s economy and its people’s lives and livelihood.
The country has, in recent years, invested heavily on rail safety after a long history of deadly accidents. Although the overall number of rail accidents has lessened over the past decade, incidents with mass casualties have persisted. Last June, 290 people were killed when two passenger trains collided after one of them struck a stationary freight train at full speed and derailed in the state of Odisha.
After that incident, opposition leaders demanded the resignation of Mr. Vaishnaw, the railway minister. He has said he was trying to expand a safety system, called Kavach, that is meant to prevent accidents when two trains are moving on the same track. Ms. Sinha said the technology had not yet been deployed on the route of the Kanchanjunga Express.
