A nightmare trip for survivors

Fifty-year-old Dhan Bahadur, a native of Nepal, who was travelling in the ill fated Gorakhdham Express train, that derailed and rammed into a stationery goods train here on Monday morning, was sleeping on the upper berth in the general coach when he felt a violent jerk and fell down on the floor.

“I fell on my daughter who was on the lower berth and I escaped with minor injuries,” said Bahadur, a cook, working at a hotel in Haryana.

Bahadur’s two daughters and grandson were, however, not as lucky. The girls sustained serious injuries on the head, back and chest. Seven-year-old Vishal, his grandson, had a deep wound on his head.

Displaying exemplary courage Bahadur, who was on way to Nepal, managed to pull out at least a dozen people from the coach that had tilted to one side after the train rammed into the goods train.
“Someone was carrying a canister of mustard oil that spilled on the floor making it difficult for me to pull the trapped passengers….the floor had become slippery,” he told Deccan Herald at the district hospital in Sant Kabir Nagar.

For the hundreds of vacationers returning to their native villages in eastern UP districts from Delhi, Haryana and other places, it was a terrifying experience. “The train was packed to the capacity…there was no room in the general coach,” said Chotey Lal, a native of Siwan district in Bihar.

“The coach shook violently…we were unable to understand what had happened….I lost all my luggage,” Lal, an LIC agent in Delhi, who had sustained injuries on his head, said as he writhed in pain on a hospital bed. The survivors also complained that medical help arrived very late. “We were taken to the hospital by the ambulance that arrived at the scene one and half hour after the accident,” Lal said.

They also said that the locals did lend a helping hand but many of them looted their luggage. Lal, whose family lived in Siwan, was on way there to meet them.Many passengers complained that they had to hire local transport to reach the hospital.