The investigation of the incident of derailment of a coach of the Howrah-bound local train near Kharagpur on 10 June has been taken over by the headquarters of South Eastern Railway. The probe earlier was being conducted by a team of junior administrative grade officials of the zonal railway, including the senior divisional mechanical engineer, senior divisional operations manager of coordination wing and so on.
The investigation, however, would now be handled by a team of senior administrative grade (SAG) officials of the headquarters of the SER. The inquiry committee now includes higher officials like the heads of the engineering, mechanical and operations of the SER headquarters. On the night of 10 June, one coach of the MidnaporeHowrah Local had derailed just before entering the Kharagpur station near Girimaidan.
With horrors of the recent triple train accident involving the Coromandel Express near Bahanaga Bazar station, commuters were in panic when the coach came off the tracks with a noise during night time. However, the coach was near the yard, was moving at a slow speed and no major mishap occurred.
According to sources, the rake was newly-rolled out and anything major was averted as it was empty. Given the recent triple collision at Bahanaga Bazar in Balasore, causing death of around 300 passengers, the zonal railway did not want to take any risk of missing out even a small detail about the incident to be able to prevent such mishaps.
“Sometimes there are chances of supervisors seeing details superficially. At the divisional level, more details are looked into. But with the probe being handled by the SAG of headquarters, an indepth investigation would be carried out so that nothing is missed in the process,” pointed out the source.