71 killed as Naxal attack derails train

At least 71 people were killed and about 150 injured in West Bengal’s West Medinipur district early Friday after a sabotage by Naxals derailed a Mumbai-bound express train and a goods train coming from the opposite direction ran into five coaches of the former.

The West Bengal government had said earlier in the day that 65 people were dead in the accident — the latest in the Naxal reprisal against government security operations in its strongholds. These numbers, though, are expected to rise, as operations were on to rescue passengers from the mangled remains of the coaches.

Four teams of the National Disaster Response Force have been deployed to partake in the rescue and relief operations, the home ministry said, apart from state government and railway ministry authorities.

According to the railways, the accident took place at 1.25 am when 13 coaches of the Howrah-Mumbai Jnaneswari Express were understood to have been derailed after the Naxal rebels sabotaged the tracks, after which a goods train rammed into the derailed coaches.

But, the exact reason for the train moving off its track remains unclear. Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee, who reached the accident site at daybreak, said an explosion had led to the derailment. Sources later attributed it to the tampering of ‘fishplates’ — a metal bar that is used to join the ends of two rails together to form a track.