Chandigarh, December 14
Today’s Mukerian train accident, near Hoshiarpur, is the seventh in line with the major train mishaps in Punjab which have taken over 350 innocent lives in the last seven years. As many as 210 passengers were killed in the country’s one of the major railway mishaps, on November 29, 1998, when Sealdah Express collided with Frontier Mail near Khanna in Ludhiana district.
A year before, on July 8, 1997, 33 passengers were killed in a bomb blast in a local passenger train at Lehra Khanna village in Bathinda district.
In the third major mishap, 43 passengers were killed on December 2, 2000, when the Howrah Mail collided with the derailed bogies of a goods train at Sarai Banjara in Fatehgarh Sahib district, 25 km from here.
Eight months later, 11 persons were killed at an unmanned crossing near Pathankot in Gurdaspur district when a tempo carrying them was hit by the Ravi Express.
At least six schoolchildren were killed and some others were injured in the wee hours of 2002-03 winters when their van was hit by a train on an unmanned crossing near Gidderbaha in Muktsar
district.
As many as seven passengers were killed in a burning train when some coaches of the Frontier Mail caught fire on May 15, 2003 at Ladhowal near Ludhiana.
In another mishap on a level crossing, five persons, three of a family, were killed when they were runover by a train due to the fault of a man who did not close the barriers near Phagwara early this year.
— UNI
