People look at mangled remains of a van which collided with a train at an unmanned railway crossing at Gutala village, near
Nurmahal, on Wednesday. Tribune photo: Pawan Sharma |
Ghumtala (Bilga), May 20
Tomorrow would have been the last day in school before the summer vacation. But 25 and odd students of Akal Academy, Bilga, around 45 kilometres from Jalandhar, never reached school today. Eight of them died and fourteen others were seriously injured when the Matador van they were travelling in, was hit by a passenger train at an unmanned railway crossing early on Wednesday morning.
Three collisions have already taken place at this unmanned crossing in the past few years. In one of these collisions, four girl students of a private college had been killed on November 23 in 2006.
While injured students were rushed to DMCH in Ludhiana, a couple of children had a miraculous escape when they were thrown out of the van by the impact of the collision, which made the door of the van come off.
The driver and passengers of the Lohian-Ludhiana Passenger train claimed that they could see the van had stopped next to the track and hence the train made no attempt to apply brakes. But at the last moment, they said, the bus moved and before brakes could be applied, was hit by the moving train, which dragged the vehicle for some 200 yards before stopping.
Other eyewitness accounts supported the suspicion that the van developed some snag and stalled on the track. Seeing the approaching the train, the driver panicked and initially waved in a bid to stop the train. Then he got back into the van and tried to start it. The engine apparently started before stalling again, sealing the fate of the driver and the children.
One of the passengers, Des Raj, also told The Tribune that the van had moved suddenly, leaving no time for the train driver to stop.
Akal Academy Bilga is a unit of Solan (HP) based Kalgidhar Trust. A school spokesman, RS Mehta, claimed that the van did not belong to the institution but that parents had hired it to carry their wards to the Academy and back.
Among the dead were Maninderjit Singh (15) and his sister, Komal Preet Kaur (10). Other deceased children were identified as Jasleen Kaur, Manpreet Kaur, Simranpreet Kaur, Varinder Singh, Jaskiran Singh and the driver, Gurmel Singh.
Four children from one joint family, however, survived the accident. Three of them were at the back of the van and escaped with less serious injuries while the one at the front, Sukhpal, had both his lower limbs fractured.
