In a distressing incident, the Delhi-Dehradun Shatabdi Express today saw a compartment being ablaze, thankfully, in the ‘burning train’ incident, there were no casualties reported. The incident occurred near Kansrao, Uttarakhand. According to Uttarakhand Director General of Police (DGP), the fire broke out due to a short circuit and eventually all the passengers were evacuated.

Uttarakhand DGP in his statement said, “A fire broke out in the C5 compartment of the Delhi-Dehradun Shatabdi Express today, due to a short circuit. The incident happened near Kansrao. All passengers were safely evacuated and no injuries have been reported so far.”

The management of billions of passengers taking trips every year with the help of the Indian Railways possesses extraordinary logistical and management challenges. Although most people come out of their unscathed and return to their worlds, there are times when due to a human error or a technical fault, the trains run into a disastrous situation. In one such incident today, a bogey from the almost-always reliable Shatabdi express was set ablaze due to short circuit.

The Divisional Railway Manager of Moradabad Tarun Prakash in his statement said, “Coach Number C-5 of Dehradun-Delhi Shatabdi Express today caught fire near Kansrao Police Station. An investigation will be carried out to ascertain the cause of the fire.”

Thankfully, the guard later informed the railway officials how all passengers were evacuated safely and the fire brigade was called as soon as the incident was reported. 35 passengers travelling in the train faced minor inconvenience of being shifted in other coaches. After the fire was controlled, the train continued towards its destination.

Later the Uttarakhand DGP reported that the train arrived at the Dehradun station. Meanwhile the newly elected Uttarakhand Chief Minister Tirath Rawat took to twitter and wrote:

“Thanks to Lord Badri Vishal and Baba Kedar Nath that there was no casualty in the train coach fire and all passengers are safe.

In the light of the incident which was fortunately not a severe one in nature, we have compiled the list of the 4 most unfortunate train disasters that befell on Indian citizens in the past few years.

The 1981 Bihar Train Disaster

Death Toll: 500+ innocent lives

Cause of incident: Unknown

On June 1981, a passenger train derailed and was thrown into the Bagmati River in Bihar. Also known as one the worst train accidents in India, the cause of the derailment is still debated. Some claim that the train’s engineer applied brakes to avoid a cow on the track. Some claim that the slippery tracks due to torrential rains caused the incident. Whatever the case may be, the incident took the lives of over 500 people. Unfortunately, due to the heavy monsoon rains, the river conditions were so deadly that even a successful rescue mission was not carried out.

The 1995 Firozabad Rail Disaster:

Death Toll: 358+ innocent lives

Cause of incident: Human Error

On the fateful morning of August 20, 1995, the Delhi-bound Kalindi Express collided with another train. Right before the train could cross the final signal, the Kalindi Express hitting the Purushottam Express when it hit a stray cow (nilgai.) The devastating incident took the lives of 358 people, while some other sources even claim that the death toll was as high as 400. The train collided onto the other one because the Purushottam Express was green-lit to operate on the same train at the same time. While the painful task of cremating the lost in a mass pyre was underway, the Indian Railways ministry initiated a probe. After a while, the then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao announced in a Parliament session that human error caused the accident.

The 2010 Gyaneshwari Express Disaster

Death Toll: 148+ innocent lives

Cause of incident: Human mischief

In the iconic Christopher Nolan film Joker said how, ‘Some men want the watch burn’. The 2012 Gyaneshwari Express Disaster is the pivotal example of one such man. The Gyaneshwari Express train derailed on 28 May, 2010 at 1 AM in West Bengal due to a Maoist attack. The train got derailed between the Kemashuli and Sardhia stations. Over 148 people lost their lives and 200 people were left injured in this incident. The main reason for such staggering number of loss of lives and injured civilians was because a goods train that was coming from the opposite direction ploughed through the train’s bogies. According to the police investigation, the Maoists of the area had damaged the train tracks which caused the train to derail.

The 2016 Indore Patna Disaster

Death Toll: 120+ innocent lives

Cause of death: Derail

The 2016 Indore-Patna disaster was one of the worst train accidents in the past decade or so which took the lives of over 120 people and injured over 180 people. According to the Railways records, the driver of the train felt a strange “equipment shaking” and “felt a jerk”, on which, he applied the emergency brakes. However, the 14 boogies of the train derailed due to the force of the brakes. The train saw the derailment at Kanpur’s Dehat district. The train passengers were woken up from their slumber at 0300 hours, and soon the train damaged the sleeper coaches in which hundreds of innocent civilians were trapped. According to reports, the S1 and S2 coach rammed into each other and most of the casualties in the incident were claimed to have come from S1 and S2.