Odisha train accident probe: The South Eastern Railway (SER) has refuted reports that a signal junior engineer by the name of Amir Khan fled the scene of the Balasore train crash.
The SER's chief public relations officer, Aditya Kumar Chaudhary, mentioned recent media reports that claimed the police sealed Khan's home after he fled with his family.
“Such reports are not factually correct. All staff are … present and part of the inquiry. They are reaching wherever the CBI and CRS [Commissioner of Railway Safety] are asking them to,” he said in a statement posted on Twitter.
The dissemination of false information regarding the crash is not new.
Some people made erroneous claims a few days after the crash that the station master of the Bahanaga Bazar railway station, near where the crash occurred, was named "Sharif," and that he was also running away.
The actual station master, S.B. Mohanty, was working with the authorities.
There were also rumors that the train accident occurred near a mosque. However, the building that many people thought was a mosque was actually an ISKCON temple.
On June 6, the CBI began its investigation into the train crash that resulted in the deaths of 292 people and involved three trains. The Union government had claimed that sabotage could have caused the fatal accident.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), probing the Odisha triple train accident which claimed over 292 lives and left hundreds of people injured, located Soro section Signal Junior Engineer -identified as Amir Khan- who went missing with his family.
The officials took him to his residence and started questioning him in Balasore on Tuesday.
The development comes day after the CBI reportedly sealed his house.
Earlier, the CBI sealed the rented house of the Junior Engineer who along with his family members reportedly went missing days fatal accident took place near the Bahanaga railway station on June 2.
The media reports stated that the Central probe team had left Balasore on June 16 after conducting investigation at the accident spot but, officials returned again on Monday and sealed JE's house.
Death toll mounts to 292
On June 18, the death toll in the Balasore train accident rose to 292 with a 24-year-old passenger from West Bengal succumbing to his injuries at a state-run hospital in Cuttack.
Of the 205 injured people admitted to the SCB Medical College and Hospital, 45 are still under treatment, including 12 in ICU, an official of the health facility said.
“Of the 12 patients in ICU, the condition of two persons remain critical," he said.
Altogether 287 people died on the spot in the triple train accident earlier this month and five others succumbed to their injuries in hospitals, while 1,208 were injured.
The Shalimar-Chennai Central Coromandel Express, Bengaluru-Howrah Super Fast Express and a goods train were involved in the pile-up, now being described as one of India’s worst train accidents.
The Coromandel Express crashed into a stationary goods train, derailing most of its coaches around 7 pm on June 2 near the Bahanaga Bazar station.
A few coaches of the Coromandel Express whiplashed the last few coaches of the Bengaluru-Howrah Express which was passing by at the same time.
Meanwhile, 81 bodies remain unidentified at the AIIMS, Bhubaneswar. Though 70 people have already given blood samples for DNA testing, the reports are still awaited, an official said.
The authorities of AIIMS Bhubaneswar on Saturday wrote a letter to the Delhi-based Central Forensic Science Laboratory to send the DNA sampling test reports for at least 15 people as their family members were eagerly waiting for such verification reports.
Meanwhile, the Indian Railways, in a public notice, has appealed to relatives of the deceased in the Bahanaga train accident to come forward and give their DNA samples to establish their identity and relationship with the deceased.
(With PTI inputs)
