NEW DELHI: The three railways employees arrested for their involvement in the horrific triple train collision at Odisha’s Balasore on Friday were sent on a 5-day remand by the CBI Court.
The employees will be made to undergo interrogation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and a further probe into the matter will be launched. The CBI had demanded a seven-day remand but the court allowed only a five-day remand, said reports.
During its first investigation, the CBI arrived at the conclusion that the accused railway employees were also involved in the ‘tampering of evidence.’ After their arrest, the three accused were presented in the CBI court and the investigating agency demanded their custody to take forward the investigation.
The deadly accident took place near the Bahanaga Bazar railway station at Balasore on June 2, claiming the lives of 291 people and left over 1000 injured.
On Friday, the CBI made its first arrests in the case, taking into custody three railway personnel for their connection with the June 2 train accident. The central investigating agency arrested Senior Section Engineer (signal) Arun Kumar Mahanta, Section Engineer Mohammed Amir Khan and Technician Pappu Kumar, all of the three employees were posted in Balasore district of Odisha.
The three railway employees were arrested under sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 201 (destruction of evidence) of the IPC, the officials said.
The CBI, while conducting its investigation found that the three accused railway employees were involved in the tampering of evidence.
After concluding its own investigation, the Railway Board had also recommended that the Central Bureau of Investigation should initiate a probe into the accident, following which, the CBI took over the investigation on June 6.
A First Information Report (FIR) has already been registered by the CBI in this matter. The agency involved itself in the case after there were allegations that the electronic interlocking system had been tampered with after the accident.
The accident itself was one of the deadliest train accidents in India's history. It involved the Chennai-bound Coromandel Express from Shalimar, the Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express and a stationary goods train on a loop track. The horrific accident near the Bahanaga Bazar railway station in Balasore of Odisha on June 2 claimed 291 lives and left over 1000 injured.
A high-level inquiry commissioned by the Commissioner of Railways Safety (CRS) to probe the tragedy found ‘wrong signalling’ to be the primary reason for the accident happening and dismissed earlier reports that sabotage or a technical glitch was responsible.
The CRS, which operates under the Ministry of Civil Aviation, is the government body entrusted with railway safety and investigation of incidents.
The inquiry panel also reported that there were ‘lapses at multiple levels’ that happened in the signalling and telecommunication (S&T) department. The report also came to the conclusion that the tragedy could have been averted if only past red flags were reported. It was found that the switches were labeled wrongly during maintenance work and these were not remedied.
The report further blamed the station manager of Bahanaga Bazar for not reporting to the S&T department the ‘repeated unusual behaviour’ of switches connecting two parallel tracks.
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