Rail services have resumed over a stretch of the railway network in eastern India where a train crash killed 275 people – as an investigation into the disaster began.
Around 1,200 people were also injured in Friday’s rail crash – India’s worst for more than two decades, which has been blamed on a signalling failure.
Video footage on Monday showed a train passing slowly past the crash site – near the district of Balasore, in the eastern state of Odisha – while the repair work continued at the side of the tracks.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
‘There are body bags everywhere you look’
Meanwhile, railway officials and witnesses gathered to submit evidence to a two-day inquiry into what happened.
Jaya Varma Sinha, a senior railway official, said a preliminary investigation found a signal was given to the high-speed Coromandel Express to run on the main track – but the signal later changed.
Prime minister Narendra Modi at the crash site on Saturday. Pic: Government of India
The train instead entered an adjacent loop line – a side track used for parking – where it rammed into a freight train loaded with iron ore.
The collision flipped the Coromandel coaches on to another track, causing the incoming Yesvantpur-Howrah Express from the opposite side to also derail, she said.
She added that the passenger trains, carrying 2,296 people, were not speeding.
Read more:
On the ground at aftermath of India train crash
‘The carriages crushed us’
“The system is 99.9% error free. But 0.1% chances are always there for an error,” she said.
Families of those killed will receive one million rupees (£9,750) in compensation, while the seriously injured will get 200,000 rupees (£1,950), with 50,000 rupees (£487) for minor injuries, railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has said.
