“Investigation will reveal who did this and why,” Ashwini Vaishnau said in an interview with New Delhi Television Network.
The revelation of the circumstances of the crash came as Indian authorities worked to remove the wreckage of the two passenger trains that derailed in Balasore district in eastern Odisha state , Friday night, in one of India’s deadliest rail crashes in decades.
Earlier, the Press Trust of India news agency reported that a preliminary investigation concluded that the Coromandel Express had been signaled to enter the mainline, but the signal was later cancelled.
The train entered another line, known as the “loop line”, and collided with a freight train that was stopped there, causing the derailment of 10 to 12 cars, and debris from some of the broken cars fell onto a nearby track.
Railway Ministry spokesman Amitabh Sharma said the wreckage was hit by another passenger train coming from the opposite direction, causing as many as 3 carriages of the second train to derail.
rescue efforts
Fifteen more bodies were recovered on Saturday evening, and efforts continued into the night as heavy cranes were used to remove a tractor that was resting on a train carriage. No bodies were found in the tractor, said Sudhanshu Sarangi, chief executive of the Odisha Fire and Emergency Services, and the work was completed on Sunday morning.
The accident happened as Prime Minister Narendra Modi focused on upgrading the British-era rail network in what has become the world’s most populous country, with a population of 1.42 billion. residents.
Despite government efforts to improve rail safety, several hundred accidents occur each year on the largest single-run rail network in the world.
In 1995, two trains collided near New Delhi, killing 358 people, in one of India’s worst rail accidents.
In 2016, a passenger train derailed between the cities of Indore and Patna, killing 146 people.
Most train accidents in India are attributed to human error or outdated signaling equipment.
More than 12 million people use 14,000 trains across India every day, traveling on 64,000 km tracks.
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