India train crash survivors recount horror as questions over safety emerge

India's prime minister had been scheduled to inaugurate an electrical semi-high-speed train equipped with a safety feature — instead, Narendra Modi travelled to eastern Odisha state to deal with one of the country's worst train disasters that left over 280 dead and hundreds injured.

The massive derailment on Friday night involving two passenger trains is a stark reminder of safety issues that continue to challenge the vast railway system that transports nearly 22 million passengers each day.

India, a country of 1.42 billion people, has one of the world's most extensive and complicated railways built during the British colonial era: more than 64,000 kilometeres of tracks, 14,000 passenger trains and 8,000 stations.

Spread across the country from the Himalayas in the north to the beaches in the south, it is also a system that is weakened by decades of mismanagement and neglect. Despite efforts to improve safety, several hundred accidents happen every year.

From 2017 to 2021, there were more than 100,000 train-related deaths in India, according to a 2022 report published by the National Crime Records Bureau. That figure includes cases in which passengers fell from the trains, collisions, and people being mowed by speeding trains on the tracks.

Official data also suggests derailments are the most common form of rail accidents in India, but have been on a decline in recent years.

According to India's Comptroller and Auditor General, Indian Railways recorded 2,017 accidents from 2017 to 2021. Derailments accounted for 69 percent of the accidents, resulting in 293 deaths.

The report found multiple factors including track defects, maintenance issues, outdated signaling equipment, and human errors as main causes of the derailments. It also said lack of money or non-utilisation of available funds for track restorations led to 26 percent of the accidents.

The Modi government, in power for nine years, has invested tens of billions of dollars in the railways. The money has been spent on renovating or replacing the old tracks laid by the British in the 19th century, introducing new trains and removing thousands of unmanned railway crossings.

Lax safety culture

The train Modi was supposed to inaugurate on Saturday was India's 19th Vande Bharat Express, connecting the western city of Mumbai and the southern state of Goa.

The modern trains are designed to help reduce the risk of crashes and derailments. They will be paired with a countrywide automatic train collision protection system, a technology that will make travel safe, according to Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.

But the system was not yet installed on the track where Friday's crash took place. It wasn't clear what caused the trains to derail and an investigation has started.

Experts suggest that the country's railway system needs to prioritize safe tracks and collision protection.

"India has achieved some success in making train journeys safer over the years, but a lot more needs to be done. The entire system needs a realignment and distributed development. We can't just focus on modern trains and have tracks that aren't safe," said Swapnil Garg, a former officer of the Indian Railway Service of Mechanical Engineers.

Garg said the crash should "shake up the whole railway system" and prompt authorities to look at the "lax safety culture."

"I don't expect authorities to turn the key and fix things quickly. The Indian railway system is huge and it will take time to make it more safer. But there needs to be a will," he said.

Survivors tell of horrific experience

Ompal Bhatia, a survivor of the three-train crash, had first thought he was dead. When the train he was traveling in went off-track, Bhatia was with three friends on his way to Chennai for work.

The 25-year-old had spent most of the four-hour journey on the Coromandel Express standing. Bhatia, who works in the plywood business, said that just before the trains crashed, some people were getting ready to sleep.

The rail car he was in, S3, was so full that there was only standing space. He had held on to a chain, as did his friends.

Another traveler in the same rail car, Moti Sheikh, 30, was also standing and chatting with a group of six other men from his village.

They were planning to eat, and then sleep sitting on the floor as they didn't have seats. Suddenly there was a loud, violent noise, Bhatia and Sheikh said, and they felt the train suddenly start to move backwards.

Sheikh first thought it was the sound of brakes, but then the coach tumbled.

"When the accident happened, we thought we were dead. When we realised we were alive, we started making our way towards the emergency window to get out of the train. The rail car had gone off the track and had fallen to one side," Bhatia told said.

As he and his friends got out, he said there was chaos all around.

"We saw a lot of dead people. Everybody was either trying to save their lives or looking for loved ones," he said.

Fortunately, he and his friends survived. Sheikh said that he and his friends also felt they would not survive. "We were crying when we came out," he said, adding that help came only after about 20 minutes.

Also traveling in the Howrah Yeshvantpur Express was Kaushida Das, around 55 years old. She survived the crash but her daughter died. "Even though I have survived, there is nothing to live for. My daughter was everything to me," she said.

A preliminary report has blamed a signal failure for the accident, which has left over 900 injured. The number of dead is likely to rise.