NEW DELHI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday arrested three railway employees in connection with the Balsore train accident that claimed lives of over 290 passengers, making its first arrests in the case.
Senior Section engineer Arun Kumar Mohanta, section engineer Mohammad Amir Khan and technician Pappu Kumar have been arrested under sections 304 and 201 CrPC. The sections under which they are held are related to destruction of evidence and culpable homicide.
"The CBI today arrested then SSE (Signal) Balasore, then SSE (Signal) Soro and then technician Balasore under IPC sections 304 and 201 and section 153 of the Railways Act, 1989, in an ongoing investigation of the case related to the train mishap at Bahanagar Bazar Railway Station (BNBR), Balasore, Odisha," CBI spokesman R C Joshi said.
The agency will now produce the arrested before a special magistrate on Saturday to seek their police custody following which their custodial interrogation will begin. The CBI will also have to file a charge sheet within 90 days else the arrested personnel will become eligible for default bail.
Investigations into the Balasore train tragedy have confirmed that error and negligence on the part of the Signal and Telecommunication department staff had led to the tragic rail accident on June 2.
Commissioner of railway safety A M Chowdhary of South-Eastern zone said, “Lapses at multiple levels in the S&T department were responsible for this (Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express) accident.” Some of these lapses included wrong labelling of wires.
Coromandel Express derails in Odisha; many dead, several injured
On June 2, at Bahanaga Bazar station of Balasore district, Odisha, Coromandel Express hit the rear of a goods train which was standing on the loopline of the station. The last two coaches of Bengaluru-Howrah Express, which were passing on the downline (toward Howrah) at the same time, were hit by the derailed coaches of Coromandel Express and capsized.
While executing signalling work (related to replacement of electric lifting barrier for level crossing gate no 94) at the railway station on June 2 evening, the S&T staff were misled by anomalies like wrong labelling of wires inside the level-crossing location box (2015), which remained undetected for years, past red-flags (2018) were ignored too, which ultimately led to mix-up during maintenance work.
The CRS also found that on May 16 before the accident, the Kharagpur division of South-Eastern Railway had a similar incident at Bankra Nayabaz station, due to wrong wiring and cable fault. “Had corrective measures been taken after this incident, to address the issue of wrong wiring, the accident at Bahanaga Bazar station would not have occurred,” the CRS wrote in his report.