CHENNAI : The death of five passengers, who travelled on the footboard of a local train at St Thomas Mount on July 24, has been classified as an accident under the category of “Error in engineering construction and maintenance” and “Error in passengers method of travel” by K A Manoharan, Commissioner of Railway Safety, Southern Circle. According to a statement, the CRS has conducted a statutory inquiry into the falling of passengers from the Chennai Beach-Tirumalpur local train at St Thomas Mount station.
Though a report by the CRS admitted that there was an error in engineering construction and maintenance, the press note did not explain the violations in the train operation further. According to the provisional findings of the Commissioner, the incident was caused “due to passengers hanging outside the coach dimensions coming in contact with infringing concrete pale fencing at St. Thomas Mount who, while falling down, pulled other passengers down”, said the statement.
In his recommendation, the commissioner has stated that hefty penalty should be imposed on those travelling on the footboard of trains. He also said that the design of an EMU coaches should be altered to that of Metro train coaches so as to provide ample space for passengers to stand in the train. “All EMU coaches should be provided with the doors,” said the commissioner.
A month after the incident, the Southern Railway has demolished a portion of platform 4 at St. Thomas Mount station in order to re-lay the tracks away from the concrete fence bordering the platform 3.
The works are planned to increase the space between concrete fence and tracks by 3.5 feet.