UP train mishap: Death toll rises to 69, rescue operations over

The toll in one of India's worst train accidents rose to 69 by the time search operations ended on Monday in Uttar Pradesh, where 14 coaches of the speeding Howrah-Kalka Mail jumped off rails a day earlier. Out of the dead, 23 were yet to be identified.

The cause of the accident, which also left 249 injured, is still unknown. The dead include two Swedish nationals.

"Bodies of 46 victims have been identified and arrangements are being currently made to put them in individual coffins so that these could be easily transported to their respective homes," Special Director General of Police Brij Lal said here.

"As for the remaining 23, we are making every possible effort to identify them, but the task seems difficult since most of these were passengers of the general compartment about whom even the railways do not have any records," he said.

He expressed hope that their families would themselves come looking for them after knowing of the accident near the Malwan station in Fatehpur district, about 140 km from here, at 12.20 p.m. on Sunday.

Six special teams of doctors were put on the job to carry out the post-mortem examination on each of the bodies.

"Post-mortem cannot be avoided and it is mandatory under law," said Brij Lal.

Of the 249 injured, 63 were discharged after basic treatment, while the remaining were showing signs of recovery in different hospitals at Fatehpur, Kanpur, Allahabad and Lucknow, he said.

According to Fatehpur Chief Medical Officer K.N. Joshi, the injuries sustained by the passengers ranged from deep gashes to amputations and fractures.

It took a good 24 hours for a joint operation by army and the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) to extricate bodies from piles of mangled metal and plastic.

The dead included two Swedish nationals, Victor and Wick, who were travelling in a second class reserved coach that was completely smashed in the accident. Their companion Oscar, however, survived and was currently hospitalised with multiple injuries in Kanpur.

After a night-long search, the rescue teams also pressed trained sniffer dogs into service to lead the way to any dead body that could still be trapped under the heaps of mangled metal.

"This eventually helped to track down at least a dozen more bodies, which could not have been detected otherwise," Fatehpur's Additional District Magistrate Anil Kumar Pathak said.

The rescue operation was finally completed around 1 p.m. on Monday after which railway authorities got down to working towards restoration of the busy track, on which traffic was thrown completely out of gear.

At least a dozen trains had to be cancelled while about two dozen were diverted.

Some survivors were seen wailing and moaning at the site of the accident all night and even on Monday morning, in search of their kin who were untraceable.

"I went to the hospital and have been running around the whole night looking for my brother," a 14-year-old sobbing Shahana told reporters at the site of the disaster, which had left her mother dead and father with an amputated leg.