For those inside the Kanchanjunga Express, a ‘shock of a lifetime’

Despite the ordeal, theirs was a relatively lucky compartment. Those at the rear end of the Sealdah-bound Kanchanjunga Express fared much worse as a goods train rammed into it near West Bengal’s New Jalpaiguri railway station. Several compartments were damaged, nine people including the goods train loco pilot died and 25 were injured.

“It was the shock of a lifetime,” said Roy.

In a different sleeper compartment, Suman Chowdhury of Agartala saw his wife fall off the overhead side berth and mildly injure herself. Several minutes after the commotion, the 43-year-old Chowdhury and several others then alighted to figure out what had happened.

“We crossed around 7-8 compartments after ours. We found that a few compartments towards the end were damaged and derailed. One was standing up in a slant, a part of it jutting into the next. There were people shouting for help everywhere. Soon, a large group of local villagers rushed to the spot and started rescuing people. They did this till railway personnel arrived and continued the rescue operation nearly two hours later,” he said.

For those two hours, said Chowdhury, the wait was overwhelming. “Many passengers kept calling or trying to contact the railway authorities but for some time, there was no help. Initially, they picked up the calls but soon they wouldn’t pick up or say they didn’t have any information of the incident. It was the local villagers who rescued passengers from those damaged compartments,” he said.

Roy, who is a havaldar with Tripura Police, said he sustained minor injuries. He was attended to by doctors and paramedics sent by the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) after a new locomotive arrived to haul 15 of the original rake of 23 compartments to Sealdah.

Both Chowdhury and Roy said they helped rescue injured passengers.

The local police personnel reached the spot at about 9:20-9:30 am, Chowdhury said. The Railway Police Force then carried out the more complex rescue work, cutting open damaged railway compartments to rescue trapped people, he said.

Chowdhury said many of those who were sitting near the train doors were badly injured; many of them were missing limbs, one was missing his leg.