KANPUR, INDIA (Diya TV) — A train derailment in India Wednesday injured 61 people, police and rail officials said, the third such significant event that has occurred with the country’s rail system in recent months, and has now caused critics to question the state of India’s aging railways.
The train came off the tracks and crashed near the northern city of Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh state early in the morning.
“Our latest assessment is that 61 people got injured in the accident and two sustained grievous injuries,” said Anil Kumar Saxena, spokesman for Indian Railways. The train had just pulled out of the station and its speed was “rather slow,” Kumar added.
The aftermath of the crash showed mangled wreckage and toppled carriages, two coaches fell off a bridge into a small canal. Passengers could be seen emerging from the remains of the train, retrieving their luggage that had been ejected from the vehicle during the crash.
India’s railway system is the fourth-largest in the world. It runs 11,000 trains per day, including 7,000 passenger trains that usher more than 20 million people across the country. However, the railway carries a very poor safety record, with thousands of people dying each year in derailments, collisions and other accidents.
During the last such event, which occurred on Nov. 20, at least 146 people were killed in a derailment in the same city.
Another train rammed into a van taking children to school at a level crossing in north India in July, killing eight of them.
Railways minister Suresh Prabhu has promised to replace old tracks and upgrade safety systems. The Indian government spends more than 90 percent of the railways’ revenues on operational costs, leaving little for upgrades of the colonial-era system. Some analysts have estimated India’s railway system would need a nearly $300 billion investment by 2020 in order to be made whole.
India’s government said it is turning to private investment partnerships and seeking loans from other countries to upgrade the network.
