RailEnquiry

BANGALORE: There are too many unanswered questions about Tuesday's Hampi Express tragedy. How can a driver who knew the route like the back of his hand miss a signal? Were loco pilot M Yesuratnam and assistant loco pilot G Balaraju, from the Guntakal division, too stressed or sleepy that they disregarded the stop signal? Or were they confident there would be no other train on the track at that time?Preliminary investigation revealed it was indeed human error which caused the tragedy when the train was travelling at 40 kmph.That the railways have problematic signalling systems and age-old infrastructure is well known. But everyone from railway ministers Mukul Roy and KH Muniyappa top brass of the Railway Board and South Western Railway reached the spot and spoke of one thing: the driver disregarded the signal.Both S Mani, divisional railway manager, South Western Railway, and commissioner of railway safety Satish Kumar Mittal said a detailed investigation would reveal the cause of the accident.Mani confirmed that an impact of this magnitude is possible at a slow speed too. But the question arises: how did the signal controller fail to alert the driver coming onto a track on which a goods train was already parked? Do the railways have a system to find the distance between two trains on the same track?

The confusion does not stop here. Mukul Roy did not accept a report presented on the signalling systems which was commissioned by Dinesh Trivedi, then railway minister, while presenting the Railway Budget, 2012-13 . Now, Roy promises to adapt and implement a Train Protection and Warning System, used in the West, to prevent such accidents.

Reports pending

Several inquiry reports and recommendations on safety aspects are gathering dust as very little follow-up action has been taken Kunzru Committee report in 1962, the Wanchoo Committee in 1968, the Sikri Committee in 1978 and the Khanna Committee report in 1998 all emphasized passenger safety

Gory sight

"It was a gory sight to watch people burning in front of us while we stood helpless. It's too difficult to express the shock in words," Rathnamma Rao said.

Another survivor Siddalingappa added: "The cries of passengers are still ringing in my ears. In a matter of minutes, the fire consumed a woman and a child right in front of me."