Surinder reportedly fell off the train and was crushed between the wall of the tunnel and one of the derailed coaches. His postmortem report is expected on Monday. His friend Devesh, too, said the train was speeding. “It was a new engine and it appeared that the driver was testing its capacity. We could feel that the train was not being run in a balanced manner.”

Ravi Pratap Pandey, an insurance agent and husband of Vandana who is admitted at the PGI, said: “My wife was sitting on a window seat. When the train got derailed and coaches rammed the tunnel’s walls, her right foot’s fingers were badly crushed. My two sons escaped unhurt. The train was being driven at a high speed.”

Divisional Railway Manager (Ambala) H K Jaggi, meanwhile, cited landslides as the reason for the derailment. “According to the driver, the train was derailed because of a boulder on the track. There have been a number of landslides in this area in the recent past. But, we are inquiring into the matter. As far as the passengers are concerned, we arranged for taxis to take them to the next station.” R K Kardam, Commissioner, Railway Safety, New Delhi, has been asked to conduct an inquiry into the incident.

The rail traffic on the route was affected as the Northern Railway authorities failed to clear the track even after 10 hours of the accident. Till the filing of this report, they were making efforts to put the derailed back on the track. All trains on the route have been cancelled till further orders.

... contd.