Hundreds died in excruciating wait for doctors

“First many thought it was an earthquake but then as we saw people getting crushed under the compartments, we knew that something else had happened,” he said, adding: “We waited for more than two hours before medical help arrived but by then hundreds had died.”

Many more remain untraced. Dipali Kalita Bora, a health worker in the state dispensary at Puranigudam in Nagaon district of central Assam, is frantically searching for her husband. Married last year, she spent barely five days with him when Havildar B C Bora, who is in the EME, was called away to Jammu. He wason the Guwahati bound Avadh-Assam Express when it collided with the Brahmaputra Mail.

When she rushed to Guwahati, she had to run from pillar to post looking for someone who could tell her where her husband was. Dipali has gone through the list of injured passengers serveral times, but B C Bora is not listed and nobody at the station is able to help her.

One official told her she could take the special train leaving for Gaisal — the accident site — to find if her husband’s body is there.

Sadly enough, even though this makes her fear the worst, she wonders. “But how can I identify him? I have met him only twice so far,” and dissolves into tears.

Prasanta Das of Guwahati got a call from one Dr Bhattacharyya in New Jalpaiguri on Wednesday afternoon, saying his brother Shyamanta and his wife Sabita had been admitted to the North Bengal Medical College hospital there after being injured in the Gaisal accident. But there is no news about their three-year-old son Nishanta.

Shyamanta Das and his familyboarded the ill-fate Brahmaputra Mail at New Bongaigaon on July 31 for Katihar, to visit his sister. The couple lost their 18-month-old daughter in May when she fell off the roof of their two-storeyed house. Worried about Nishanta, Prasanta Das said: “They had taken one month’s leave to visit our sister for a change so that Sabita could recover from the shock.” Their parents have refused to take any food since the telephone call bringing the bad news.

Allauddin, a factory worker in Guwahati, was returning from his village of Basaithasagar in Muzzafarpur on the Avadh-Assam Express. “I was in coach number eight, but after I had got down at Panjipara (the station before Gaisal) to get some drinking water, the train left. I somehow managed to jump into the last coach. After sometime the train crashed.”

Several of the passengers of coach number eight died. Allauddin’s is a miraculous escape. “Had I not got down at Panjipara, I too would have been also crushed,” says Allauddin, still shivering, 36 hoursafter the accident.

Ram Naresh Choudhary’s family from the same village, travelling to Dibrugarh, has lost a child. “Krishna was my elder brother’s 11-year-old daughter whom we had brought along from the village for a better life in Assam. But while my two children Chand Prakash (9) and Seema (7) were injured, my niece died on the spot. We identified the body at Gaisal, and left it there itself,” Choudhury said.

And the carnage was everywhere. Manoj Prasad, a young businessman on his way to Delhi, said he had never seen such a gory sight. “I was horrified to find a portion of a leg of the person who was travelling next to me lying on my lap as I was fast asleep. Salamat Khan, who died later was not aware that he had already lost his leg and was asking me if everything was all right,” he said, adding both of them could not get a ticket and had requested the ticket collector for a berth at around 7 pm.

Ramprakash Singh, who was travelling from Delhi, said he had to jump from a height of about 45 feetas his compartment had been thrown on top of two others due to the impact of the collision.

“There was a loud bang and I found myself on top of the compartments,” the 45-year-old radio mechanic said. “I feel sorry for others. I managed to come down, but many women and children died under the debris,” Singh said.