The Railways authorities have suspended seven employees, including three arrested earlier by the CBI on charges of alleged negligence of duty that led to the triple train accident at Bahanaga Bazar station in Odisha’s Balasore district on June 2. The accident claimed 293 lives and left more than 1,000 people injured. More than a month after the accident, 41 bodies are yet to be handed over to family members, as their DNA cross-matching reports are yet to be received. Besides the three persons under CBI custody, the four others who faced action include the station master on duty on the day of the accident, the traffic inspector at Balasore, the signal technician, and the assistant divisional signal and telecom engineer, it was informed. Sources in South Eastern Railway (SER) said the suspension order was issued on Friday. The four more staffers suspended were not named. “While three persons have already been arrested by CBI and subsequently suspended as per rule, the Railway administration has also suspended four other employees. They were suspended for not being alert. Had they been alert, the tragic mishap could have been averted,” Anil Kumar Mishra, general manager, SER, told reporters in Balasore on Wednesday. Mishra said the CBI is investigating to ascertain the cause of the accident and they are waiting for the report. On July 7, the CBI had arrested senior section engineer Arun Kumar Mahanta, section engineer Md Amir Khan, and technician Pappu Kumar. They were booked under IPC Sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence or giving false information to screen offender). After completion of the five-day remand period of the trio, the CBI on Tuesday got an additional four days of remand. The agency is interrogating the accused at Chandaka police station, on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar. Sources said CBI has summoned a few other Railways officials to join the probe. Earlier this month, the Commission of Railway Safety, which had also investigated the matter, found that the tragedy could have been averted had past warnings not been ignored. It had said that the wires inside the level-crossing location box had been wrongly labelled and this stayed undetected for years, leading to a mix-up during maintenance work. The accident occurred when the Chennai-bound Coromandel Express entered the loop line and rammed into a stationary goods train. A few coaches of Yesvantpur Superfast Express, headed toward Howrah, derailed after crashing into the capsized coaches of the Coromandel Express lying scattered on the adjacent track.
