Prestige over Problems: The 2023 Bahanaga (India) Train Collision
Background
Bahanaga is a town of just 593 people in eastern India, located in the federal state of Odisha 580km/360mi northeast of Bhubaneswar and 215km/133mi southwest of Kolkata (both measurements in linear distance).
The town has a station on the Howrah–Chennai main line, a 1661km/1032mi double-tracked electrified rail line connecting Howrah with Chennai. The line is built in the 1676mm broad-gauge commonly found in India, placing the rails further apart than the global standard of 1435mm. The line is one of India’s seven main corridors as it runs along the country’s eastern coastline, carrying both freight and various passenger services at up to 160kph/99mph. The southbound (left hand) track is usually referred to as the “up main line” while the northbound track is called the “down main line”.
The Trains Involved
Information on this is more vague than usual, but I didn’t want to exclude the accident for that reason.
At the time of the accident a freight train was parked at Bahanaga Bazar station, consisting of a locomotive and several freight cars loaded with iron ore. The train had been headed southbound and had been parked in a short siding at the station referred to as the “up loop line”. The length and weight don’t seem to be publicly documented, but it was a very heavy train.
The Coromandel Express (train number 12841) was a southbound long distance express passenger service consisting of 21 four-axle cars, mostly passenger cars but including a baggage car and a kitchen-car, pulled by SRC/WAP-7 37334. The WAP-7 is a six-axle electric locomotive introduced in 2000. It measures 20.56m/67ft in length ata weight of 123 metric tons and can reach a top speed of 140kph/87mph in the regular version (modified versions not involved in the accident have reached higher speeds).
Coming the other way was the SMVT Bengaluru–Howrah Express (train number 12864), a northbound express passenger service from Bengaluru to Howrah. The express consisted of 23 four-axle cars also pulled by a WAP-7 unit. Similar to the Coromandel most of the cars are passenger cars, with the Bengaluru-Howrah Express having a higher capacity as it includes no sleeper cars. Online reports indicate that both trains could be overcrowded at times due to people riding without having purchased a ticket. Post-crash estimates for the Bengaluru-Howrah Express claim around 1200 passengers at the time of the accident, with a possibly similar amount for the Coromandel Express.
The Accident
The Coromandel Express is approaching Bahanaga Bazar station from the north on the second of June 2023 at approximately 6:55pm, running under green signals as it is intended to pass straight through on the main line. The train is thus travelling at full speed, close to the 128kph/80mph speed limit. It will pass the oncoming Bengaluru-Howrah Express, itself intending to race through the station at speed, near the station. Unbeknownst to the driver the points at the entrance to the station are set to the siding though, which is occupied by the parked iron ore train. The locomotive is thus directed into the siding at 7:00pm, slamming into the back of the parked iron ore train an instant later at full speed. The locomotive actually climbed the rear cars of the freight train before becoming stuck. This immovable obstacle causes the entire train to derail, with train cars being flung all over the place. The oncoming express passes the station at just that moment and is struck by three of the Coromandel Express’ passenger cars in the side of the rear 4 cars (three passenger cars and a brake-car). 296 people are killed in what becomes one of India’s worst ever rail disasters, well over 1200 are injured.
Aftermath
A massive rescue-operation was launched in response to the catastrophe, involving over 15 firefighting-teams, 140 doctors, 200 ambulances and 200 police officers. Locals also helped in pulling survivors from the wreckage and/or driving them to hospitals. A local high school, chosen for its proximity and available space, was turned into a makeshift morgue to collect and try to identify the victims. The latter task proved difficult, requiring responders to try identifying victims by clothing and belongings. Most victims had been seated in the forward 3 cars of the Coromandel Express, which included two “general category” cars. Those could be boarded with just a basic train ticket, no reserved seat, and were usually quite crowded. Making things even more difficult was that only passengers with reserved seats were logged by name. Rumors soon circulated that some relatives had been given the wrong dead body due to mis-identification (and DNA-testing taking too long). In the meantime 1175 people had been taken to hospital, including, miraculously, the Coromandel Express’ driver and his assistant. Some survivors left the site in the “remaining” Bengaluru-Howrah Express, whose 19 more or less undamaged forward cars were allowed to continue to Howrah. A separate train was issued to take 195 surviving passengers from the Coromandel Express to Bhadrak. In a cruel twist of fate some survivors who had boarded one of several buses chartered to take them home suffered (further) injuries when the bus crashed. Around 50 trains were cancelled due to the route closure, just as many were diverted, and while airlines were warned not to increase airfares due to the increased demand bus tickets in the region skyrocketed in price.
Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced two days after the accident that an error in the electric signal control system had led to the catastrophe. He assured the public that electronically controlling signals and points is usually very safe, despite the catastrophic accident it had allegedly caused. According to him, damaged wires or a short circuit had erroneously allowed the station’s entrance signal to turn green while the points were still set to the up loop line.
Two days after the initial announcement Mister Vaishnaw announced that the Commission of Railway Safety (CRS) had concluded their investigation and that the Central Bureau of Investigation shall lead a criminal probe into the cause of the accident, indicating that he believes (/decided) that the error had happened due to negligence or malice. He theorized that someone likely manipulated the signal, points, or wiring between them.
The rapid succession of the accident, the supposed discovery of the cause, the announced conclusion of the investigation and the request for a criminal probe (which was accepted) drew international skepticism, feeding suspicion that the government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi was interested more in saving face than in actually sorting out what happened and why. The accident at Bahanaga had been the worst rail accident India had seen in years, and suddenly a conclusion to the investigation was announced before the first round of hearings (to which over 40 people had been summoned) had even taken place.
As a comparison, a full investigation into a fatal rail accident here in Germany rarely takes under a year, excluding any legal proceedings.
The CRS usually waits for at least 48 hours before starting on-site investigations, as to not interfere with rescue and recovery of victims. Individuals like Mister Vaishnaw are to be notified within 30 days about “provisional findings”, with a full report following within another 150 days. It appears thus that, in this case, the Indian Railways had done a very brief internal investigation, which was announced as the official one, getting well ahead of the actual official investigation by the CRS (which belongs to the ministry of aviation, being purposely unrelated to the railway). Not to mention that handing things off to the CBI meant that the accident would be investigated solely by investigators while, maybe skilled in their field, have nothing remotely resembling the topical experience of the CRS’ staff. Sure, their job would be quite clearly to focus on “finding culprits”, but…shouldn’t the detailed cause also be determined as certainly as possible? A comprehensive assessment of the railway’s safety situation can barely be expected by the CBI’s investigation.
Mister Vaishnaw was quick to explain that an electrical error, likely caused by tampering with the points, signal or system, had given the Coromandel Express a green “straight ahead”-signal while the points were set to the loop. This shifted the blame to direct criminal action by an individual, both justifying giving the CBI the lead and pushing the focus away from any possible problem with the railway itself. A signalling inspector (the name was withheld as, as a union activist, he feared victimization) explained that the sabotage-theory was highly unlikely as the line had a high traffic frequency, simply leaving very little time for the supposed sabotage to take place between the freight train’s arrival and that of the Coromandel Express. The points would have been set straight ahead to allow the Express to depart the prior station (Panpana), after which a two minute lockout-timer would prevent any further operation of them. The Express was travelling at 128kph/mph, meaning it took 141 seconds to reach Bahanaga station. The points that led it into the loop were slightly ahead of the station, meaning any sabotage/malicious operation of the points would have had to take place in under 20 seconds. In which time the station master would’ve also had to be distracted (or cooperative/the culprit himself), and something would’ve had to be done to keep the signal from turning red now that the points pointed to an occupied track. In summary, the claim that someone must have maliciously caused the accident was declared as nothing more than a “baffling conspiracy theory”.
Meanwhile a near-miss in February of the same year between an express train and a freight train had only not turned into a collision because one of the drivers spotted the other train he was headed for and managed to stop at the last second. In that case the situation had developed as signals had been allowed to turn green despite the points being set to an occupied track, quite exactly what must have happened at Bahanaga and the literal opposite of how interlocked signaling (the connection between points and signals) is meant to work. The signalling inspector explained to the press that “the commercial side of operations calls the shots, the engineering side deals with what they got”, stating that often when his crew would ask for 90 minutes of track-section-closure to repair or maintain something they would get 20 at best. In his words, if one crew makes money and one costs money, the bosses clearly prefer fulfilling the former’s requirements.
The aftermath of the catastrophe at Bahanaga once more saw the Railway Board urging senior officers to “spend time with” workers out in the field to better understand their jobs and encouraged engineers and repair crews to confidently push their demands even if it means delays. But at the same time there’s probably a good reason why the signaling inspector feared victimization for speaking to the press, thus asking for his name to be withheld or a false name to be used.
A different employee familiar with the site of the accident told The Wire (an independent Indian news site) that the wiring for the points which sent the Express into the loop had apparently been worked on in some way the day of the accident. Normally any work on the controls for a set of points required post-conclusion testing by two employees from the maintenance staff in cooperation with the station master, ensuring that the points were fully controllable and also did what the signal box equipment claimed they did. However, the employee claimed that staff shortages and time constraints made the requested testing a rare occurrence.
The Railway Board claims that there were 8747 accidents due to “equipment failure” between 2021 and 2022, 2592 of which were traced to “failure of signaling equipment”. Those weren’t fatal accidents, but almost 30% of all accidents being due to the same cause still indicates a problem worth urgently addressing. Which would be a lot easier to do if there hadn’t been almost 15000 vacancies in the signalling-department at the same time.
The government of Prime Minister Modi, very much including Modi himself, had been criticized plentifully for a “penchant for glitz”, giving a massive priority to keeping up appearances. Modi had made an effort to inaugurate every route of the Vande Bharat, (a semi-high speed express network) and promised the introduction of bullet trains (high speed trains like the Japanese Shinkansen-system) to India. Expensive projects, but they did more for the public face of the Indian railway and the government than increased maintenance would. It’s not a new saying that, to get politicians interested in something, it needs to be fitted with a red ribbon for them to cut. Fittingly, Modi’s visit to a hospital at Balasore to visit survivors of the crash had been criticized as only happening since there were cameras present. His statements of being “distressed” by the “mishap” and “extending his thoughts” to the grieving families had been compared to the “thoughts and prayers” commonly provided by US politicians. A kind gesture, but…how about we try actually fixing the cause?
In Modi’s defense, he did create the RRSK, a fund to provide financing for improvement of railway safety systems, in 2017. The railways had recommended an allocation of INR 1.19 lakh crore to the fund for a five-year period starting in 2017.
Note: India uses a unique numbering system, “lack crore” essentially means 10¹² so the 1.19 lakh crore are 10.7 billion Euros/12.6 billion USD.
The railway budget for 2017 was banished on what the media has called utterly specious grounds, leading to the allocation being trimmed to 1 lakh core. In reality the actual allocation fell way short of that sum too, to the tune of reaching 25% of what was meant to be allocated. The total sum evidently allocated in the 7 years between the fund’s creation and the accident at Bahanaga reached a mere 96000 crore (8.64 billion Euros/10.1 billion USD). When the program was renewed for another five years the official allocation was cut to 45000 crore, bringing the 10-year total to 1.41 lakh crore. Making matters worse was that, in the first seven years, signalling and telecommunications received a mere 10500 crore, 1.16 billion Euros/1.12 billion USD. A non-public report in 2017 calculated a known backlog of signalling repairs and overdue maintenance costing 7800 crore, not counting any improvement/modernization, just keeping what was there operational/returning it to operational condition.
It did not improve the public opinion when media research unveiled that a significant part of what was allocated had been spent on tableware, gardens, foot massages, bonuses and electrical appliances. The railway argued that these things increased safety as employees were happier and more relaxed, but it was still argued that there were other safety investments that would’ve been more efficient.
The CRS eventually, well after their supposed end of investigations, released their findings in July 2023, a month after the accident. Their investigation found that the accident had most likely been caused by wrongly arranged wiring, which had been allowed to continue its existence due to a lack of oversight. Apparently the station manager at Bahanaga had repeatedly reported “unusual behavior” by points connecting the main line to the loops, which were not followed up on. The wiring for the points had also been altered compared to its original configuration, a change that didn’t impact function but had not been replicated in the wiring diagrams by for maintenance and repair crews. These conditions had been found at the site of a 2022 train crash at Bankranayabaz station, leading the CRS to place a damming line in their report:
“Had corrective measures been taken, after this incident, to address the issue of wrong wiring the accident at BNBR [the abbreviation for Bahanaga station] would not have taken place.”
According to the CRS’ report this failure to document non-standard wiring allowed work on the wiring near the points (actually related to the operation at a gate at the station, not the points themselves) to result in the points not functioning as indicated in the signal box, while effectively disabling the interlocking between the points and the entrance-signal. The signal box likely showed the points as set to “straight”, which also allowed the signal to turn green, when the points were actually set to the loop. The points worked and indicated correctly when the freight train arrived and was directed into the loop, but must have then failed to return to the “straight ahead”-setting despite the signal box and entrance signal indicating they did. The CRS’ report closes with the recommendations to check similar wiring diagrams for accuracy, ban the alteration of signal wiring without an officer/supervisor present, and require modified wiring to be checked by a second unrelated crew before the points or signal in question are returned to regular service. Lastly, it was stated that the emergency response to the accident had also been slower than it should be. Obviously the recommendations regarding the wiring modifications stand in direct opposition to the established staffing shortages and lack of maintenance time. And an investment in more safety, while undoubtedly sensible, doesn’t have the “glitz” as a new train or express service.
On the legal side of things the CBI arrested 3 railway officials in July 2023, charging them by September with culpable homicide (but not murder), causing the disappearance of evidence and endangering the safety of railway passengers by willful act or omission. The accused were responsible for the upkeep of the signaling system, specifically overseeing testing, overhauling and altering existing installations, leading the CBI to blame the failure of the signaling system which led to the accident on them. The proceedings were “stuck” as of October 2024, with the accused released on bail, and I couldn’t find any report of a conclusion/sentencing having taken place since.
Blame it on the Scapegoat
While it took the CRS about a month to release solid findings, and Mister Vaishnaw just two days to release his, the public found a supposed reason even faster. India, a majorly Hindu country, has an established and growing problem with Islamophobia. As such it’s no problem that, very soon after the crash, self-proclaimed experts on social media blamed the accident on Muslim citizens, claiming it was part of “rail jihad”, a holy war using/targeting the railway. The first “evidence” was that the crash happened on a Friday, a special day in Islam. A lot of social media posts circulated, simply stating “just saying, yesterday was Friday” alongside a photo of the wreckage. While the Friday is the week’s most sacred day in Islam that reasoning alone was rather weak even for a conspiracy theory. It was followed up by claims that the station master, Mohammed Sharif, had caused the accident and then fled in the chaos. This theory was pushed when Mister Vaishnaw told his story of “someone must’ve sabotaged something”. Who would have easier access than the station master? Except the station master wasn’t Muslim, wasn’t named Mohammed Sharif, and hadn’t fled. The conspiracies were “supported” by various videos and photos of (supposedly) Muslim people vandalizing railway infrastructure and equipment, which were just archive footage pulled out of context. Lastly, a white building with a domed roof near the site was presented as proof. It was said that the building is a mosque, claiming that “obviously” the Imam at that mosque must have told his followers to attack the rail line. Except the building is the local Bahanaga ISKCON temple, a structure related to Hinduism.
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