A day after two passengers died after falling off a crowded train in Belghoria, the body of another woman was found on the tracks at Bidhanpalli, near Patipukur. According to the locals, she had met a similar end.

Though the Eastern Railways was not forthcoming with the data, its officials said over 900 casualties have been reported since January in the Sealdah division alone, with a majority of the accidents occurring during the rush hour. The Government Railway Police has reported over 200 unnatural deaths in the tracks near Dum Dum and around 100 near Naihati, of which a majority occurred after falls from over-crowded trains.

Sealdah station handles nearly 11 to 12 lakh passengers per day.

On Thursday, train services were disrupted along the Sealdah-Dum Dum-Belghoria stretch for hours after the body of 21-year-old Kakali Mondal, a resident of Kalyani, was found around 10 am. Angry locals squatted on the tracks, protesting against the callousness of the Railways. The body, they alleged, was attended to nearly three hours after it was discovered.

On Wednesday, six people fell off a local train after hitting an unused electric pole, resulting in the deaths of two youths. The injured, who were admitted to hospitals, are reportedly stable. The railway authorities have also launched an inquiry into the accident.

“Of all the unnatural deaths that are reported, nearly 50 to 60 per cent of cases happen due to a fall from the train in the rush hour,” said a senior officer of the Eastern Railway. “Hundreds of such cases do not even get reported.”

Most of these accidents occur when people hang out of the compartments while the train is leaving the platform, he said.

Apart from Dum Dum and Naihati, Ballygunge, Titagarh, Sodepur, Agarpara, Khardah, Sonarpur, Belghoria, Barrackpore, Bidhan Nagar report the maximum number of such accidents. In comparison to the train tracks in Mumbai and Delhi where overhead wires have replaced transformers, Bengal still continues to use these poles. The unused transformer that caused Wednesday’s accident is one of the hundreds lying defunct along the tracks in the Sealdah division. Asked about the total number of such defunct transformers, PK Gupta, ADRM, said, “we do not know the exact number”.

Removing these transformers, he said, is a “costly affair” and it is expensive to lease out tenders for the removal of just one pole. There are many water hoses of the British period still lying near the tracks that are unused today, much like these poles. “But how can people blame the Railways, when they themselves hang out of compartments which they are not supposed to do?” he asked.

Most transformer poles are at a distance of 2.2 meters from the track. The pole where the accident occurred was 2.32 meters away from the track and had been lying defunct since 2004.

But officials agree that tracks often expand and contract due to heat, which results in a slight change in position, which has fatal results — especially when the poles stand near the bends.

With coaches having a sitting capacity of around 120, tickets are issued for nearly thrice the number per compartment.

While increasing the number of coaches from 9 to 12 to meet the rush hour demand has been sanctioned, it has been done only in the Sealdah-Diamond Harbour route. Adding more coaches would mean stretching the platform, and in places where it has been expanded, the poles have not been removed to safety.