Faulty signal connections made during repair led to Odisha rail crash, probe finds

An official probe in the deadly Balasore rail tragedy has found that workers repairing a rail-road barrier in India made faulty connections in the automated signalling system on the network.

The first collision occurred due to modifications done to the signalling circuit to fix frequent problems at a nearby rail-road barrier, said the Commission of Railway Safety (CRS) investigators in the probe report as accessed by Reuters.

The disaster struck when a passenger train hit a stationary freight train, jumped off the tracks and hit another passenger train coming from the opposite direction.

Further, the unavailability of a standard circuit diagram with the Local railway staff when they tried to take the boom-barrier circuit offline for repair, led to a faulty connection in the signalling system, the report said.

The malfunctioning system directed the passenger train onto the path of the freight train, it added.

One of India's deadliest rail crash on June 2 in Bahanaga Bazar station killed as many as 288 people, leaving more than a thousand injured.

Indian Railways, the fourth largest train network in the world, is a state monopoly run by the Railway Board. The board reports to the Railways Ministry.

The rail network is undergoing a $30 billion transformation with gleaming new trains and modern stations under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's push to boost infrastructure and connectivity but the crash raised questions about whether safety was getting enough attention.

The CRS probe report said there were lapses at multiple levels in the signal and telecom department and standard operating procedures were not followed during the repair work.

(With inputs from Reuters)