No casualties reported, authorities saved major mishap

Railway Board Chairman Arunendra Kumar on Wednesday said that the railway authorities managed to avoid a major mishap, as they had prior information of Maoist shutdown in Amamasilva village of Bihar's Aurangabad district where the rebels blew up Delhi- Howrah railway track.

"We had received inputs that there will be Maoist bandh today in the village. Therefore we had taken precautionary measures of restricting the speed of train in Bihar. We made the patrol train to run before Rajdhani," said Kumar.

"The engine of patrol train between Mughal Sarai and Gaya section derailed because of the blast thereby vanishing four meters of the railway track. Simultaneously, up and down lines were affected. The Bhubaneswar train was behind this patrol train and it was stopped. The rail transport normalized at 6 am on Wednesday, and slowly the trains will start moving," Kumar added.

He also said that the authorities were cautious keeping in mind the Rajdhani accident that had happened sometime back.

"Some time back we came to know that Rajdhani was derailed due to the same reason, so we were aware about this and were cautious. This problem arises mostly in Bihar, therefore, we have already imposed alerts and restriction in the state. There were no casualties. We could save a major mishap because of the timely actions by officials. Since we are aware of this kind of inputs, so speed of trains in that area were also restricted and the track and CRPF personnel were augmented to keep a watch," said Kumar.

The incident happened amid tight security that was stepped up by the Indian railways on Tuesday in Gaya after the Maoists had called for a shutdown.