Railway station turns into mortuary

Hours after tragedy struck the Tamil Nadu Express, the stench of death hovered over Nellore Railway Station, which resembled a mortuary.

There was utter chaos as relatives jostled for space to identify the charred bodies at the waiting hall of the railway station. A railway official said that only five persons have been identified so far. “One of the identified was Venkatraman from Tamil Nadu,” he said.

Amidst the putrid smell and wailing relatives, coffins and 40 huge ice bars arrived at the station. The charred remains were transferred to the coffins along with ice for transportation to the mortuary at the Government Hospital.

While the official toll is 32, it is widely believed that the number could go up. There were more than 25 persons who suffered burn injuries - some of them over 80 per cent - and were taken to four hospitals in Nellore - Jai Bharat Hospital, Bollineni Hospital, Government Hospital and People’s Poly Clinic.

Meanwhile, a special train carrying 13 relatives of those who were in the ill-fated S11 and other coaches, arrived in Nellore from Chennai at 1.40 pm.

The station also witnessed high profile visits, including those of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy, Telugu Desam Party leader Chandrababu Naidu, filmstar politician Chiranjeevi and Railway Board Chairman Vinay Mittal.

Various speculative theories floated around about the cause of the incident with some blaming it on an electrical short circuit.

Interestingly, this is the third such fire accident involving trains in South Central Railway (SCR) in the last 10 days. The two other incidents involved empty rakes of passenger trains in the Landen division of SCR, said sources.