Premier train on a premier route: bare hands key tools in rescue

Many of these families will for days to come rue the fact that the rescue operation was very sluggish in the few hours after the derailment.

South-eastern Railways official P K Ganguly remembers people screaming for help and the bodies piled up in his coach, AS1, which was the first to jump over the bridge on Dhave river near Aurangabad and fall on the dry river-bed.

‘‘I suddenly felt I was being tossed out. I only remember the darkness,’’ he said. Ganguly and three others broke open a window with the cover of the ceiling fan. ‘‘There were 16 to 18 passengers in the bogey but I didn’t see anyone else coming out,’’ he said.

Six hours after Howrah-Delhi Rajdhani Express 2301 derailed, Ganguly was still looking for his colleague, D C Majumdar, also a railway employee. He believes he didn’t make it. His main grouse is that the rescue team that reached the spot had no equipment with them to begin with.

‘‘They had only torches. Then they brought a gas-cutter but the cylinder was empty,’’ he recalled.

Sitting under a tree, 26-year-old Mohammed Ishtiar couldn’t stop weeping. A Bangladesh citizen, Ishtiar had come to India with sister Rukia Begum, sister-in-law Shobha and a two-year-old niece on Thursday; they were going to Delhi to meet relatives. All three were killed.

‘‘Till 4 am I kept screaming and screaming. There were many voices in the darkness,’’ he said. Ishtiar himself was rescued by the army. He was in the same coach as Ganguly — it had 64 berths. Fourteen bogies had derailed and six had fallen sideways over the bridge, leaning against each other in a disorderly pile. Four of the coaches were badly mangled.

Hundreds of villagers rushed to the site to help the survivors. Mohammad Akhmal reached the spot within 15 minutes of the derailment. He said the initial rescue was carried out by the villagers.

‘‘We helped the passengers climb out of the bogies. Initially, we couldn’t do much since it was completely dark. Once we got torches, we were able to help out,’’ he said. The villagers also brought food and water for the survivors.

The survivors were huddled together in little groups, comforting each other. Yusuf Khan, his wife and two children were in AS1 and were trapped inside for two hours. ‘‘The bogey was completely smashed; I located my wife and two small children and we just prayed,’’ he recalled with a shudder. Their servant, however, died on the spot.

Next to him, Amitabh from Dhanbad had been waiting for hours. He was on his way to Delhi to join a new job on Wednesday. Badly shaken, he now just wants to go back to Dhanbad. For three hours, he and three others were stuck on top of the train. He complained about rescue workers coming with inadequate equipment.

At 5:30 p.m the rescue team came but by 2 pm the toll had begun to climb. Bodies covered in white sheets kept piling up on the dry banks of the river. Over 100 soldiers were still pulling out bodies and survivors from the wreckage.