At least one passenger has died and seven others were injured as 11 coaches of an express train derailed in the Indian state of Odisha on Sunday.
The train was travelling from southern India’s Bengaluru city towards the city of Kamakhya, its destination, when it derailed mid-journey at 11.54am local time.
The coaches came off the tracks near Cuttack, Odisha, where hundreds of passengers were stranded on the railway tracks as the authorities scrambled to arrange a substitute train.
Odisha Fire Service director-general Sudhansu Sarangi confirmed seven passengers were injured and were taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. However, officials have yet to confirm any fatality in the accident.
An eyewitness on the scene told The Independent one person died and eight were rushed to a hospital while dozens were injured in the accident.
Footage from the scene showed passengers climbing out of the derailed coaches of the train with their luggage as workers tried to look through the damaged section of the train.
🚨BREAKING NEWS:TRAIN ACCIDENT.
— Ashish Chaudhary (@ashishranwa1818) March 30, 2025
👉This incident occurred in Cuttack district of Odisha.
👉Major train accident in Odisha: 11 coaches of Kamakhya Express derail from the track.#TrainAccident pic.twitter.com/Yu2V9G0s5l
Enraged passengers who were left stranded for hours said there was no drinking water as they waited for help.
East Coast Railway spokesperson Ashok Kumar Mishra said: "Arrangements are being made to help the affected passengers reach their destinations. Our priority is to restore the line at the earliest and accordingly, other trains will be diverted," he said.
Three trains have been diverted so far because of the train derailment.
This is the latest derailment on the country’s vast and essential rail network, raising concerns over the safety of a network on which millions of people depend each day.
The incident in Odisha comes almost two years after the state saw one of the deadliest accidents in modern Indian history, when a collision between three trains killed nearly 300 people with over 1,000 injuries.
“We do not know why train mishaps are frequently occurring in Odisha. We are hearing that some work was going on and it was not done properly for which the mishap occurred,” a passenger told OTV news.
On 22 January this year at least 13 people were killed after passengers disembarked from a train following rumours if fire and were killed after being hit by another high speed train in in Maharashtra's Jalgaon district.
On 30 July last year, 18 coaches of the Mumbai-Howrah Mail derailed near Jamshedpur in Jharkhand after colliding with a goods train. At least two people died in the accident.
According to a latest report by the Commission of Railway Safety, the number of railway accidents increased from 35 in 2021-22 to 48 in 2022-23, with serious accidents doubling in successive years.
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