M A I N   N E W S

3 dead as train rams into bus at unmanned crossing
Bipin Bhardwaj
Tribune News Service

Chak Shakur (Jalandhar) June 18
Another unmanned level crossing claimed three lives on Friday morning when the Jammu-Howrah Himgiri Express rammed into a private bus near Chak Shakur, 34 km from Jalandhar on the Jalandhar-Jammu highway. A worse tragedy was averted as the mini-bus had only three passengers and the driver inside at the time of the accident.

The deceased, including two family members of a Kargil martyr, were killed on the spot while the fourth passenger sustained severe injuries and was operated upon in a private hospital at Jalandhar. The attending doctors claimed he would survive.

The driver of the ill-fated bus, Kuldeep Singh, and two of the three passengers - Baljit Kaur (40), widow of a Kargil martyr Jarnail Singh from Moklan and her son, Gurpreet Singh (10), died on the spot. The likely survivor Sagar (25) could provide valuable information about the accident once he recovers.

Eyewitnesses blamed the driver for reckless driving. There was no obstruction at the spot, they said, and there was no way he could have missed seeing the train. But people speculated that the driver could have been speaking or quarelling on his mobile or possibly was absent-minded enough to spot the train too late. The bus, plying from Tanda to Moklan, was dragged for almost a kilometre before the train finally came to a halt. By then the bus had been completely crushed. Such was the impact of the collision that passengers were hurled high in the air and they fell almost 20 metres away from the railway track.

The train drivers, Milkhi Ram and Kewal Krishan, recalled that the train was moving at 100 Kms per hour when they suddenly saw the mini-bus in front of them. Applying emergency brakes at that speed could have derailed the coaches and led to a major accident, they pointed out. The Divisional Railway Manager (DRM), Ferozepure, Vishvesh Chaubey, said the inquiry report would be submitted within a day.