Crowds, chaos

However, Saturday was to expose the special arrangements and coordination between various agencies. Till 6 pm, when General Manager, Northern Railways, R.R Jaruhar, completed his press briefing, no one was sure when did the incident had happened.

While Lieutenant-Governor B.L Joshi said it had taken place around 2:15 pm, the Railways said it happened around 1:10 pm. Delhi Police said it was somewhere around 2 pm. Pradeep Kumar Goyal, Divisional Railway Manager, insisted it was 1:10 pm. Jaruhar could not give the exact time.

Jaruhar said since November 9, the Railways had started 40 special trains, 25 of them for Patna, and added 378 coaches in addition to the regular trains. This special service would continue till November 23. Last year, there were five special trains and 83 additional coaches.

On Saturday, four special trains were scheduled to leave at 11:40 am, 2:30 pm, 8:30 pm and 11:55 pm.

The peak hours at the station, Goyal said, are between 12-4 pm when the maximum trains leave. For each train, he said, there are 1500 passengers. Each passenger, officials said, is accompanied by at least three people. That’s how the crowd swells. The maximum rush was on platforms 2-3 and 5-6.

Immediately after the incident, the railway athorities swung into action and both overbridges, along with the staircases, had policemen and railway officials, some carrying walkie-talkies, controlling the crowds.

‘‘This was freak incident since the crowds compared to past two days were much less,’’ said Goyal. ‘‘The train had been waiting at the platform since 11 pm and left at its scheduled time of 3:10 pm. A hundred personnel of the RPF and GRP and 50 railway officials were on duty.’’ Police presence was very thin though the police claimed that reserve force had been deployed in advance.