Three railway employees, a conductor and two travelling ticket examiners (TTEs), who were on duty in the three coaches of Frontier Mail which caught fire on Thursday killing 38 passengers, were suspended today.Conductor Sudhir Prakash and TTs Ajit Kumar and Dharamvir were suspended with immediate effect, pending an inquiry by the railway authorities, following a report by guard Pancham Yadav that no TT had reported to him on the site of accident.Yadav said, ‘‘I saw the fire peek outside on a curve near Laddowal and immediately, I released the pressure to stop the train. Then, with the fire extinguisher I had in my room, I ran towards the burning bogies. But when I realised I did not have the required equipment to fight the flames, I decided to help passengers come out of the train. It was at this time that no one came up to me to report the incident.’’ He, however, added it was true everyone was helping people. ‘‘I was not able to recognise any person on job for they were all without their coats or uniform,’’ Yadav said.The suspended employees, on their part, said they had immediately organised rescue operations. ‘‘The coats we were wearing were only hampering the work, so we took off our coats but this doesn’t show we were not on duty,’’ Prakash said.Meanwhile, Commissioner, Railway Safety (CRS) Bhupinder Singh, probing the train inferno, tried to recreate the blaze scene in one of the coaches of the ill-fated train to ascertain the cause of the accident.At the railway yard here, a sleeper coach next to the three affected coaches was sprinkled with kerosene, littered with cotton wool and a short circuit was done. The experiment was stopped when smoke started coming out of the coach, they said, adding the motive behind it was to ascertain if short circuit had caused the fire which engulfed three coaches.Besides Singh, Ferozepur division railway manager H.C. Punia was among the senior railway official present.Media was not allowed inside when the CRS recorded the statement of a number of persons, including the guard, driver Tirath Ram, Divisional Fire Officer Kartar Singh, a passenger Manju Sharma and the suspended employees.Kartar said five fire tenders were immediately rushed to the spot. A number of firemen of the Ludhiana Municipal Corporation, who had participated in the fire fighting and rescue operations, also appeared before the Commissioner.
