The Hindu : All train fire victims identified

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, May 18, 2003

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National

All train fire victims identified

By Our Staff Correspondent

CHANDIGARH MAY 17. All the victims of Thursday's fire disaster on board the Frontier Mail have now been identified and seven members of a family from Hyderabad were cremated in Ludhiana today. The railways have put the final toll at 36.

The railways have suspended the three ticket collectors of the burnt coaches. The guard has been summoned again to depose before the inquiry panel headed by the Commissioner for Railway Security, Bhupinder Singh.

Reports from Ludhiana, quoting railway authorities, said that after all the bodies were identified, the relatives of the seven victims belonging to one family performed the last rites. The district administration made arrangements, including ferrying the bodies and relatives.

Those cremated included: D. Venkat Ramana, T. Srinivasan, D. Girija Devi, Radha Rani, D. Raj Lakshmi, D. Anuradha and D. Rajeshwari. The family was on a pilgrimage to the Golden Temple in Amritsar.

The volunteers of the RSS helped the relatives in performing the religious rites. Heart-rending scenes were witnessed, as seven pyres were lit in the presence of relatives, including those who are under treatment in hospitals and those who had come from Hyderabad.

The relatives of the other victims preferred to take the bodies to their native places for performing the last rites.

After almost three days of investigation and performing post-mortem examinations, the authorities identified all the victims, while a senior member of the medical team of the railways said that the number of victims in the fire was 36 and not 38 as reported in some newspapers. It was discovered that two body parts of the victims had dismembered in the intense heat were earlier mistaken as two separate bodies.

The Divisional Manager (Ferozepur) of the Railways, H.C. Punia, told presspersons in Ludhiana that proper verification and counterchecks were carried out to ascertain the identity of those who claimed the bodies. He advised the kin of the victims to file their claims for compensation with the respective Regional Compensation Tribunals.

The inquiry panel, meanwhile examined the remaining coaches of the train, which after the incident, were taken to Amritsar. The committee would listen to versions of any of the witnesses or others who wanted to provide any information about the incident. The hearing would be conducted on Sunday and Monday at Ludhiana in the guest house of the railways.

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