Kanchanjunga Express passengers’ screams filled the air: Tripura journo recalls horror

AGARTALA: It was 8.50am on a wet Monday morning. Kamal Chowdhury was seated in the lower berth of S9 coach of the ill-fated Sealdah-bound Kanchanjunga Express sipping his morning tea when the train suddenly lurched forward with great force. The impact was so powerful that his 11-year-old nephew, Rajat, who was still asleep, was thrown off the upper berth and fell directly into his lap and the tea spilled onto the floor.
Chowdhury, along with six of his family members, was travelling in the Kanchenjunga Express to attend a cousin's wedding in Bengal's Nadia district when the train was hit by a goods train at Rangapani village, 15km beyond New Jalpaiguri station.
"The train came to an abrupt halt, with most passengers thrown about here and there. In a matter of seconds, the quiet compartment was filled with screams of panic-stricken and injured passengers," Chowdhury, a senior journalist with a vernacular daily in Tripura, recounted on the phone.
"From the window, I could see a sea of people rushing towards the train. I too got out of the train to understand what had happened," he said. The scene that unfolded before him was of chaos and confusion as two carriages of another train had mounted the rear of their train.
Only a few passengers were awake at the time of the accident and the train was running two hours behind schedule.
"Everyone in our coach was injured, including my wife and other family members. Fortunately, there were no fatalities in our coach. Hats off to the villagers and tea garden workers of the locality who rushed to the accident spot immediately and started a rescue operation," Chowdhury said, adding that within a short time, numerous tom-tom vehicles arrived at the site and transported 15 injured individuals to a nearby hospital.