Accident probe clears top rly officials & rewards some

Accident probe clears top rly officials & rewards some
BHAVNA VIJ & MUKESH BHARDWAJ

NEW DELHI/CHANDIGARH, APRIL 2: Three months after the then Railway minister Mamata Banerjee ordered an inquiry into the Howrah-Amritsar Mail accident near Fatehgarh Sahib in Punjab that killed 43 persons, most of the Railway officials that came under scrutiny have been rewarded.

While six of the seven officials sent on leave after the accident have been reinstated in their original posts, one has got a plum posting in Delhi.Vijay Kumar, who was then Divisional Railway Manager Ambala, has been posted as Chief Engineering (Construction), Northern Railway.

Mamata Banerjee had come down on Kumar in public, charging him with failing to ensure the safety of passengers on the northern track and reprimanding him for two major accidents taking place during his tenure.

Kumar, before becoming DRM, Ambala, was Chief Bridge Engineer at the NR headquarters, and was territorial in-charge of Ambala division when over 100 rail fractures were discovered at the Delhi-Ambala section following the Khanna rail collision in November, 1998.

The inquiry report, prepared by Commissioner Railway Safety (CRS) G. P. Garg, has held the drivers of both the trains responsible for the mishap. The goods train driver, for not activating any of the warning mechanisms flash lights and detonators and the express train driver, for ramming into the derailed coaches at full speed.

The goods train driver, Garg said, had seven minutes before the express train collided with the derailed coaches.

But he wasted time in talking to the guard and failed to activate the warning signals.

It could not be determined if the cause of derailment was due to a defect in the track or in the wagon, the report says, as all clues were destroyed in the badly-mangled coaches.

Some of the other wagons of the goods train, however, were found to be defective, the report adds.

The report also adds that chances of rail fracture were remote but could not be ruled out either.