With over 80 bodies yet to be identified in the Balasore train accident in Odisha, the railways is using the Sanchar Saathi web portal to identify victims.
According to the Indian Railways officials, of the total 288 deaths, as many as 83 bodies remained unclaimed as of Wednesday.
Now railways is using Sanchar Saathi, an AI-based portal to identify the bodies.
Sanchar Saathi allows customers to know the mobile connections issued in their name and also track and block their lost smartphones. This artificial intelligence-based portal was recently launched by Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw who also holds the information & technology portfolio.
To identify the bodies of the train accident victims, the portal traced the victims’ phone numbers and Aadhaar details using their photographs. Following this, their family members were contacted, officials said.
The officials admitted that identifying some of the bodies has become a big challenge as many of them were beyond recognition. Some have no identifiable features left. It is difficult to identify them even from their clothes since they are soaked with blood,” an officer said.
The railways initially called a team from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to the site to take thumbprints of the dead to ascertain their identity.
“That did not work out since in most cases the skin of the thumbs were damaged and prints were difficult to take,” said the official.
The railways is also trying to ascertain the identities of the dead by tracing calls made through nearby towers just before the accident and linking them to phones which shut down immediately at the time of the crash. It is trying to trace the address of mobile users whose phones were switched off at the time of the crash.
(Published 07 June 2023, 15:53 IST)
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