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As India grieves train crash that killed 275 people, relatives still wait for bodies of loved ones

Families of the victims of India’s deadliest train crash in decades filled a hospital in Bhubaneswar city on Monday (Jun 5) to identify and collect bodies of relatives, as railway officials recommended the country’s premier criminal investigating agency to probe the crash that killed 275 people.

Distraught relatives of passengers killed in the crash on Friday lined up outside the eastern city’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences. Meanwhile, survivors being treated inside the hospital said they were still trying to make sense of the horrific disaster.

Outside the hospital, two large screens cycled through photos of the victims, their faces so bloodied and charred that they were hardly recognisable.

Each body had a number assigned to it, and relatives stood near the screen and watched as the photos changed, looking out for details like clothing for clues.

So far only 45 bodies have been identified, and 33 have been handed over to relatives, said Mayur Sooryavanshi, an administrator who was overseeing the identification process at the hospital in the capital of Odisha state, about 200km south of the site of the train crash in Balasore.

Friday’s deadly crash was one of the worst rail disasters in India’s history. Investigators said that a signalling failure might have been the cause of the disaster, in which a passenger train hit a freight train, derailing on the tracks before being hit by another passenger train coming in the opposite direction on a parallel track.

The collision involved two passenger trains, the Coromandel Express traveling from Howrah in West Bengal state to Chennai in Tamil Nadu state, and the Yesvantpur-Howrah Superfast Express traveling from Bengaluru in Karnataka to Howrah, officials said.

Authorities recommended on Sunday that India’s Central Bureau of Investigations, which probes major criminal cases in the country, open an investigation into the crash.

India’s Central Bureau of Investigation to probe railway crash, with focus on track management system.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/india-train-crash-relatives-wait-bodies-loved-ones-3539426