275 people died in a terrible train accident in Odisha. Hundreds have been injured. After this terrible accident, there were screams, stampedes, and piles of dead bodies everywhere. Someone didn’t have a head while someone didn’t have a hand. People who survived the accident were frantically searching for their loved ones. 

ISH News has released a video about how the incident occurred. Click here to check it out:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEHU8E-NAdY

The most gruesome scene of the accident was the pool of blood everywhere, the scattered bodies screaming. In such a situation a two-and-a-half-year-old child died crying next to his dead mother's body. Many people were shocked by this scene. Government Railway Police (GRP) sub-inspector Papu Kumar Naik said that in the Coromandel Express, their several bodies were disfigured beyond recognition. However, there were around 40 bodies with no visible injury marks or bleeding from anywhere. Many of these deaths were presumably from electrocution when the overhead wire fell on the train. Someone lost their sister. Some lost their children, some lost their mothers. Also, those who reach Balasore after the news of the accident frantically search for their relatives. Heart-wrenching things for the relatives of those who died. Here are some heartbreaking stories.
The 46-year-old Pinaki Mondal from Shyampur in Howrah sold lemon tea on various long-distance trains before calling it a day at Balasore, where he stayed in rented lodgings, every evening. But on Friday, as the Chennai-bound Coromandel Express rolled into Balasore station, there was still some tea left in his kettle. So he had a choice to make. Get off at Balasore as usual (he visited his family in Howrah every other Saturday). Or earn a few more bucks by continuing to the next stop, Bhadrak, and then catch a down train to Balasore. He turned to Sujoy Jana, 32 — his fellow vendor, Howrah's neighbor, and Balasore's roommate who sold Jhalmuri on the Coromandel — and made the wrong choice. Jana said, ‘He said he would travel on till Bhadrak, sell the tea left in his kettle, and then return to Balasore. He told me to go home and cook the meat dish that we planned to have for dinner.’ Jana bought meat on his way home and was cooking when Bittu Shah, a relative of Mondal who lives near the accident site, called him and told him about the crash.

Jana immediately called Mondal on his mobile but there was no ring. “I stopped cooking and rushed to the accident site on a neighbor’s two-wheeler.”

At the site, Jana, the neighbor, and Bittu jumped over corpses, searching for Mondal among the mauled bogies. They also helped railway workers and villagers remove some of the bodies and pull out the injured.

It was 10 pm when “I suddenly spotted a body in the coffee-colored shirt he (Mondal) was wearing that day”, Jana said. “I dragged myself towards the body, and a closer look confirmed our worst fears. The accident had badly bruised his face but Mondal-da was still recognizable.” The trio requested the police not to remove the body immediately. “They agreed and we waited for Mondal-da’s family to arrive. His wife Jyotsna and other family members had left Howrah for Balasore soon after the accident,” Jana said. “Around 11.30 am today, Jyotsna identified the body.”

Helaram Malik got news of the Odisha three-train crash only a few hours after he dropped his son Biswajit off at Shalimar station to board the Coromandel Express. According to a Times of India report, Helaram, a Howrah-based shopkeeper, called up his 24-year-old son on his cellphone as soon as he received news of the accident. Biswajit picked up the call and answered in a feeble voice: He was alive but in terrible pain.

Helaram did not waste a moment. He got in touch with Palash Pandit, a local ambulance driver, and decided to travel 230 km to the site of the crash at Odisha’s Balasore. Accompanied by his brother-in-law Dipak Das, Helaram reached Balasore on Friday night itself. However, despite inquiring at all the hospitals in the vicinity where train crash victims were being treated, Helaram could not find his son. Helaram said, “We never gave up. We went around asking people, hoping to get leads on where to go next. One person told us that if we could not find anyone in the hospital, we should look at Bahanaga high school, where the bodies were kept. We could not accept it, but went anyway.” At the morgue, they were not allowed to look at the bodies. However, Helaram and Das were present when a commotion broke out at the morgue because some people saw a victim’s right hand shivering. The man was none other than Biswajit, who had been presumed dead and kept in the morgue.

The 24-year-old was unconscious and had suffered serious injuries in the crash. His father and uncle immediately put him in the ambulance. The family then drove Biswajit to SSKM Hospital in Kolkata for further treatment. His condition is critical but stable, and he has undergone surgery on his ankle with further surgeries expected to take place today. It is believed that Biswajit’s body entered a state of suspended animation, where the body’s vitals slow down to the bare minimum. Since most of the rescue was conducted by non-medically trained people, it is likely that someone mistook him for dead and placed him in the morgue.
In a heart-wrenching video from the Odisha train tragedy incident, a father is seen searching for his missing son in a room full of dead bodies. As the man sifts through the bodies, he is gently approached and asked about his actions. Overwhelmed with emotion, he breaks down and explains how his son boarded the train one station prior and is now missing. The person behind the camera inquires about the man's village. The helplessness in his eyes and his desperate desire to locate his son will leave anyone in shock. This is just one father's situation, hoping against hope to find his son alive and not among the bodies he has just gone through. One can only imagine the anguish felt by hundreds of families across the country who have either lost their loved ones or are holding onto hope for a miracle in finding their missing relatives. MK Deb and his daughter boarded the Coromandel Express. The pair had an appointment with a doctor in the neighboring Cuttack City. They swapped seats with strangers after the girl insisted on sitting near a window. The father and daughter went to the other coach positioned three rakes away.” When the crash happened, the coach where Mr Deb had reserved seats was completely crushed, but the father and daughter escaped unscathed. 

Amidst the wreckage, officials discovered damaged sheets of paper inscribed with handwritten Bengali love poems. In addition to the poems, the officials also found a diary with sketches of elephants, fish, and the sun drawn in it. The identity of the owner and the poets remains unknown. Nobody has come forward to claim the poems or identify the poet, whose fate is still unknown.

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