Scattered human flesh, mutilated limbs bear mute testimony to Bahraich mishap

The speeding train dragged several bodies for one to two kilometres before it came to a screeching halt, rousing the villagers in the vicinity.

Fairunnisa, a resident in the area, said she first mistook the sound of collision for misfiring of a faulty silencer. “I realised what had happened only after I heard the agonising cries of the people”.

With swarming crows feasting on rotting human flesh, the site presented a gory look as shoes, blood-stained clothes and mutilated limbs bore mute testimony to the severity of the collision.

While official figures put the death toll at 37 and an equal number injured, unofficial sources, however, said 48 were killed as “the bus was overcrowded”.

A villager, Sham Ratan said, many such mishaps had occurred in the past years also at the unmanned level crossing but “nothing has been done to check such incidents here”.

The marriage party was going from Masauli to Rithaura in Bahraich district. The district hospital at Barabanki, where most of the injured were being treated, reverberated with painful cries of the mauled men and women.

A doctor, attending on the patients, said most had suffered severe fractures. “At least half of the injured are in serious condition… And many of them have lost a lot of blood”.

Eyewitnesses claimed that some passengers sitting on the roof of the train too were thrown violently on the ground due to sudden application of the brakes.

Railway officials, however, denied there were any casualties among the train passengers and maintained that all the victims were bus passengers only.

The local villagers were the first to reach the site, another villager said, adding their timely help may have saved a few lives.

A railway engineer, present at the site, said the train must have struck the middle of the bus accounting for the heavy toll. “Persons sitting in the front portion of the bus have escaped with minor to major injuries while those in the rear have perished”.

Incidentally, the car in which the groom was sitting and two other buses carrying the marriage party had crossed minutes before the collision, local villagers said.