Priya Aditi
On Friday, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrests three railways officials in connection with the tragic triple train accident in Odisha in which over 290 passengers were killed.
The detained railway employees have been identified as senior section engineer Arun Kumar Mahanta, section engineer Mohammad Amir Khan, and technician Pappu Kumar. The central investigation agency stated that the suspects were arrested under sections 304 and 201 of the Indian Penal Code for “their actions which led to the incident,” but did not specify what those actions were.
After a month-long inquiry, the CBI has now added the two stringent sections pertaining to culpable homicide and destruction of evidence to its case. In its first information report (FIR) filed last month, which was a re-registration of the Odisha police case, the agency did not invoke these sections.
The detention occurred days after the Commissioner of Railways Safety (CRS) reported the Balasore accident to the railway board on Wednesday. The investigation revealed that the Coromandel Express was on a collision trajectory with a freight train on another track as a result of faulty signaling caused by two botched repair jobs, one in 2018 and one hours before the accident.
“The rear-end collision (of Coromandel Express) was caused by lapses in the signalling-circuit-alteration performed… in the past and during the execution of signalling work related to replacement of electric lifting barrier for level crossing gate number 94 at the station,” according to a report seen by media.
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The Railways did not release the CRS report on the triple train tragedy in Balasore to prevent any “influence or interference” with the CBI’s ongoing investigation, according to officials familiar with the situation.
