A team comprising officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation arrived Monday evening and initiated its probe into the Balasore train accident. The probe, according to officials, could also reveal whether the derailment of the Coromandel Express was caused by negligence or sabotage.
Union Railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said Sunday that a preliminary investigation showed the accident on Friday evening happened “due to a change in electronic interlocking.”
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Officials cited by the Times of India in a report published Tuesday have claimed that the preliminary probe into the triple train crash has shown clear evidence of tampering with the interlocking system. The officials cited in the report said that a probe by the CBI would “help identify who exactly were responsible, and their motive”.
The Railway Board’s recommendation that the probe into the derailment, the worst in India in decades, be handed over to the CBI has come in for criticism from several Opposition parties. On Monday, the Congress raised questions on the government’s intent to address the “systemic safety malaise” in the Railways, and accused it of instead finding “diversionary tactics to derail” any attempts to fix accountability.
Meanwhile, officers The Indian Express spoke with said that “tampering of the location box” near the Bahanaga Bazar railway station was most likely to be the reason why the Coromandel Express took the loop line instead of the main line and collided with a goods train.
Officers said that the sequence of events leading to the crash and derailment of the train was possibly triggered by a malfunctioning level-crossing gate — its boom barrier was not working — before the station. In one version, the barrier remained raised, and in another, it did lower but the signal continued to be red. In both cases, it was a problem, they said, according to IE.
The handing over of the probe to the CBI isn’t the first instance of a train mishap being investigated by a central agency. In 2016, the Narendra Modi-led government handed over the probe into the train accident near Kanpur to the National Investigation Agency. Another accident in 2017 in Kuneru in Andhra Pradesh was also handed over to the NIA.
However, in both cases, the NIA probe failed to find any evidence to prove it and did not even file its chargesheet into the cases. The government, while handing over the probe to the investigating agency had claimed information due to sabotage activity.
India said its deadliest rail accident in nearly three decades was due to a fault in an electronic signaling system, as the focus turned from recovering victims to restoring train operations.