A view of derailed boogies after accident of Shalimar Express train near Detha Station. PHOTO: APP
Around 18 injured passengers were shifted to Civil Hospital, Hyderabad, where five patients were believed to be in critical condition, according to the duty doctor, Shaukat Lakho.
According to the doctor, the left arm of Shabana, 25, was amputated from the bicep while the right arm of Abdul Ghafoor, 35, was fractured. Tanveer Bano, 50, lost a thumb and another patient, who has yet to be identified, sustained a fracture on his left leg. He was referred to Karachi. “Around 90 per cent of these patients were orthopaedic cases,” said Dr Lakho.
The accident took place near Detha station, some 15 kilometres away from Hyderabad. The last bogie of this Karachi-bound business train overturned while two others derailed. “We hear time and again that a bogie or two have derailed or a train collided with some vehicle on the railway crossing,” said a schoolteacher Hashim Detho, who claimed he was among the first to reach the site.
An injured passenger, Ghafoor, said that they felt vibrations after the train drive pressed emergency brakes, and then the bogie flipped over. “The vibrations lasted 30 seconds,” said an elderly man, Abdul Hameed.
The injured Khalid Farooq, a railway guard who was in the last compartment of the bogie, said he felt one of the wheels become detached. “It seemed as if one or two wheels have broken.
The train moved on for a few hundred metres before the bogie fell down.”
Meanwhile, the railways department have sprung into action. “A four-member inquiry committee has been formed to investigate whether the accident was caused by the tracks or the detachment of a faulty wheel from the bogie,” said Railways DS Nisar Ahmed Memon. The report will be submitted within three days.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 15th, 2015.
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