Toll in train derailment rises to 98

Saibal Gupta
Jhargram (WB), May 29 (PTI) The toll in the
Mumbai-bound express train derailment by Maoists rose to 98
Saturday morning as more bodies were pulled out from the
wreckage of the mangled coaches with rescuers working
throughout the night.
South East Railway officials put the number of injured
at 250. Five of the seriously injured have been taken to
Kolkata for treatment.
"Ninety-eight bodies have so far been taken out from
the mangled coaches. 96 bodies have been kept at the Midnapore
Hospital and two at the Kharagpur Railway Hospital," SP, West
Midnapore, Manoj Kumar Verma told PTI.
Only 25 bodies have been identified so far and
postmortem of 60 bodies has been done.
Railway officials said the toll could rise as the
worst-affected S-5 and S-6 coaches were yet to be cut open.
Bodies could be inside the two mangled coaches as also under
the engine of four wagons of the goods train, the officials
said.
Maoists derailed the Howrah-Kurla Lomanya Tilak
Gyaneshwari Super Deluxe Express on Friday when the train was
running between Khemasoli and Sardiya stations in east Indian
state of West Bengal.
Verma said the bodies are being preserved in such a
manner that a DNA test can be conducted on them in case of
need.
"Two temporary camps have been set up at the Midnapore
Hospital where relatives of the dead and injured can get
information. Besides displaying the photographs of the dead at
the hospital, officials have uploaded them on government
websites for the convenience of the affected families," Verma
said.

The Midnapore Medical College and Hospital, where all
the bodies have been kept, is facing a space crunch as its
morgue is not equipped to handle such a large number of
cadavers.
A garage of the hospital has been turned into a
makeshift morgue with the bodies being kept on slabs of ice.
"The summer heat, however, is proving to be a
problem," hospital officials told PTI.
The hospital authorities have placed a large LCD
screen where the images of the bodies were being displayed to
help relatives identify them.
Among the injured, there were children in the age
group of three to four years who were separated from their
parents in the accident. They all bore "unidentified" tags, a
PTI correspondent, who visited the hospital, saw.
There is confusion on the exact cause of the train
derailment in the Maoist stronghold with Railway Minister
Mamata Banerjee on Friday blaming it on a "bomb blast" at the
rail track while top brass of the West Bengal Police said it
was an act of sabotage since fish plates were found removed.
DGP Bhupinder Singh said pendral clips which are used
to hold sections of tracks together were found missing over a
50-metre stretch at the accident spot. Some passengers also
said they heard no blast. "It is a clear case of sabotage. The
Maoists have done it," Singh said.
India's Home Minister P Chidamabaram had said that the
disaster appeared to be an act of sabotage, but it was not yet
clear whether explosives were used in the blast.
Mamata also said that TNT explosives and gelatine
sticks were also found at the accident site. PTI SAG
MRD