BERHAMPUR: Amidst the dance of death and destruction, the Bahanaga train crash saw glimpses of hope and survival. Two families from the Ganjam district who travelled in Coromandel Express on Friday night had a brush with death but returned without a scratch.
Both families were travelling in a B-2 coach. Ezekiel Das who had gone to Kharagpur to attend a function, was returning home with his wife and son. The couple was reserved in B-2 while the son George Jacob was in the B-8 compartment.
A contractor, Ezekiel recalls the fateful journey. He wanted to go to the TTE with a request to change his and his wife Sumitra’s seats to B-8 so that they could travel with their son. However, Sumitra stopped him saying he could do so after dinner and maybe at Cuttack where the train halts. They all stuck together. At Bahanaga, the train halted with a loud crash and everything went upside down.
“People rammed into each other while women and children started crying. We came to know of the accident when the train came to a halt and some of us got down. I saw limbs strewn all around. There were passengers whose faces were disfigured. People were running in the dark,” the contractor said. Ezekiel tried to help those trapped under the coaches.
The other family was that of Manoranjan Padhy who belonged to Digapahandi. Padhy was with his family of seven, including a kid and three minors. Recalling the terrifying moment, he said they were gossiping when they felt a heavy jerk and the lights went off. Most of the 70 passengers in the compartment fell from their berths.
Soon, they took out their mobile phones and started searching for family members. “When we came to know that it was an accident, we collected our baggage and got down with other passengers. I cannot remember how we reached the main road,” he recounts.
From the main road, they took a bus to reach Bhubaneswar and then to Berhampur. Though the accident did not impact them physically, most of them were in a state of shock and remained indoors till Monday morning. Padhy expressed his gratitude to Lord Jagannath for saving his family.