India’s authorities make first arrests over train collision that killed 293 people

Arrests made under criminal code sections pertaining to culpable homicide and causing evidence to disappear

Officials in India have made their first arrests over the horrific three-way train collision in June that killed 293 passengers and injured at least 1,000 others.

The country’s prime investigative agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), that is investigating the train crash that occurred in eastern India’s Odisha state arrested three railroad employees on Friday.

The accused have been identified by CBI officials as senior section engineer Arun Kumar Mohanta, section engineer Mohammad Amir Khan and technician Pappu Kumar.

The CBI said it arrested the employees for “their action(s) which led to the incident”, reported The Hindustan Times newspaper.

The arrests were made under India’s criminal code in sections concerning culpable homicide and causing evidence to disappear, according to the CBI statement.

Earlier this week, Reuters revealed that the workers who were responsible for repairing a rail-road barrier had made faulty connections in the automated signalling system.

In a report, the Commission of Railway Safety (CRS) investigators said “the first collision occurred due to modifications made to the signalling circuit to fix frequent problems at a nearby rail-road barrier”.

“Local railway staff did not have a standard circuit diagram which led to a faulty connection in the signalling system when they tried to take the boom-barrier circuit offline for repair,” it said. “The malfunctioning system directed the passenger train onto the path of the freight train.”

The traumatic accident has been labelled the country’s deadliest rail accident in a century.

India Train Crash (AP)

Previously, investigators said there were “lapses at multiple levels” after the Balasore Coromandel Express incorrectly diverted away from a clear main track to a side loop, where it crashed into a stationary freight train.

This caused the engine and the first couple of coaches of the Chennai-bound passenger train to jump the tracks, topple and hit the last two coaches of the Yesvantpur-Howrah train that was heading in the opposite direction on a second main track.

Meanwhile, the investigation by the CRS found that the “wrong labelling of wires” inside the level-crossing location box remained “undetected for years” and ultimately led to a mix up during maintenance work.