Title - Railway officials blame trespass

New Delhi, Aug. 19: Railway officials described the train tragedy at Dhamara Ghat as an “incident” and not an “accident”, seeking to blame the victims as solely responsible for inviting the fate they met.
The officials are of the opinion that the victims made an “illegal trespass” on the tracks to come in front of a speeding train. But given the political compulsions in a democracy, no official chose to come on record to blame the people for the “mass suicide” kind of incident and said an inquiry had been ordered into the tragedy. Officials said given the scale of the tragedy it appeared that the crowd tried to stop the speeding train.
Railway minister Mallikarjun Kharge too termed the tragedy an“unfortunate incident” and sought to blame the victims for the tragedy but refrained from stating it in clear terms. On “humanitarian grounds” he announced a compensation of Rs 5 lakh for the dead and Rs 1 lakh for the injured.
Making a statement in the Rajya Sabha, Kharge said two passenger trains were stopped at Dhamara Ghat station to give passage to the “superfast” train that ran over the people. He said people from the two stationary trains “got down on the non-platform side”, clearly hinting that the victims were at fault.
“Some passengers got down (from the two trains) on the non-platform side. In the meantime train number 12567 (the superfast train) arrived,” Kharge told the House and added that the driver of the speeding train tried his best but could not save the people.
“The loco pilot after passing the home signal saw some persons on the tracks and applied the emergency brakes. However, by the time the train stopped some people got run over,” the minister told the Rajya Sabha, terming the incident “unfortunate”.
“It is not an accident but an incident. What is the fault of the railways if people don’t take care and come in front of a speeding train?” asked an angry railway officer at Rail Bhavan. He said that there was no “advisory” from the state administration to slow speed of the train in view of gathering of devotees.
Statistics compiled by the railways shows that in the past four years over 50,000 people have been killed on “railway tracks and level crossings because of trespassing”. Till June this year, over 8,000 lives had been lost due to trespassing.
Railway officials said in all these cases the deaths were due to the fault of the victims but in some cases they had to pay compensation owing to political compulsions, like today’s tragedy.