Balasore triple train accident: Signal staff union welcomes bail to three accused
Balasore triple train accident: Signal staff union welcomes bail to three accused
New Delhi: The Indian Railway S&T Maintainers’ Union welcomed Orissa High Court’s Tuesday decision to grant bail to the three accused in the June 2023 Balasore triple train accident that had killed about 300 passengers.
The high court granted conditional bail to the three men, arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for their alleged involvement in the triple train tragedy in Balasore’s Bahanaga Bazar that had also left more than 1,200 injured.
Alok Chandra Prakash, general secretary of the Indian Railway S&T Maintainers’ Union, said, “We came to know that the high court has granted bail to all the three accused. The union welcomes the decision.”
Prakash also pleaded for their release before Diwali.
However, Kedar Nath Tripathy, a lawyer who appeared for one of the accused, expressed reservation on their early release due to legal formalities.
A high-level railway inquiry had found “wrong signalling” to be the main reason for the accident and flagged “lapses at multiple levels” in the S&T department but indicated the tragedy could have been averted if past red flags were reported.
The independent inquiry report submitted by the Commission of Railway Safety to the Railway Board said notwithstanding the lapses in signalling work, remedial actions could have been undertaken by S&T staff if “repeated unusual behaviour” of switches connecting two parallel tracks were reported to them by the Bahanaga Bazar station manager.
The report also suggested that non-supply of station-specific approved circuit diagrams for work to replace the electric lifting barrier at level crossing gate 94 at the Bahanaga Bazar station was a “wrong step that led to wrong wiring”.
It said a team of field supervisors modified the wiring diagram and failed to replicate it.
The report also said there was a similar incident on May 16, 2022, at Bankranayabaz station in the Kharagpur Division of South Eastern Railway on account of wrong wiring and cable fault.
“Had corrective measures been taken, after this incident, to address the issue of wrong wiring, the accident at BNBR (Bahanaga Bazar railway station) would not have taken place,” it added.
