Indian authorities appealed to the public on Tuesday for help in identifying more than 100 bodies in hospitals and morgues after 275 people were killed in the worst train collision in the country in over two decades. The accident occurred on Friday when a passenger train collided with a stationary freight train, causing it to derail and collide with an oncoming passenger train near the Balasore region in the eastern state of Odisha.
After extensive efforts to rescue survivors and clear and repair the tracks, train services in this section resumed on Sunday evening. A senior health official in Odisha told Reuters that as of Monday evening, around 100 bodies remained unidentified. A senior police officer informed Reuters that there is a detailed list of the characteristics of each body, but relatives are first allowed to view the gruesome images of the bodies to identify their missing loved ones.
The railway board recommended that the Central Bureau of Investigation, a federal agency, take charge of investigating the cause of the disaster, while the railway safety commissioner for the southeastern region began a separate investigation on Monday. A team from the Central Bureau of Investigation is scheduled to arrive at the accident site on Tuesday to initiate its investigation. Preliminary findings indicated that the likely cause of the incident was a technical failure in the signaling system.
