School turns into morgue, locals post photos to help kin identify victims

With trepidation in their hearts and prayers on their lips, dozens of families from Bengal landed in Balasore on Saturday morning, looking for their loved ones whom they had been unable to contact since Friday evening.

For many of them, the search ended at a makeshift morgue, set up at Bahanaga High School, where bodies were brought in from the crash site. Throughout the day, hundreds of relatives waited for their turn to claim thebodies.
As most bodies were yet to be identified, locals gathered at the school clicked pictures and posted them online with hopes that their kin would be able to identify them. Public address system was used to announce the names of the deceased obtained from railway authorities to facilitate their identification by their kin.

Manoranjan Mistri left his Sonarpur home after hearing the news of the accident and reached Bahanaga around 10am. He scouted the crash site for his two neighbours, DipankarMondal and Arnab Mistri — for almost five hours but could not find either amid the mangled heaps of metal. He was directed to the school, where he met West Midnapore deputy magistrate Anirban Sengupta, who was guiding people from Bengal at a camp office in themakeshift morgue. Mistri managed to find Dipankar’s body, but not that of Arnab.

There is another makeshift camp near the railway gate to keep the bodies, where many grieving relatives had converged. Oidul Naskar from South 24-Parganas found his relative Miraj Sk’s mortal remains in this camp. Purna Giri from East Midnapore managed to trace the bodies of two of his acquaintances — but could not find four others he was looking for. There were grief-stricken relatives at Balasore hospital and Soro Hospital morgues, too.
Dozens of bodies still remained unidentified as they were badly mutilated.

Sujoy Khanra, Riyan Ramanath, Hemanta Pradhan and Dipak Dash in Bahanaga