Train accident: statements of passengers to be recorded
By Mohammad Asghar
RAWALPINDI, Jan 31: Investigators probing into the derailment of the Islamabad Express have decided to record the statements of some of the passengers of the train, whereas the 13-member railways staff who was on duty on Sunday were also being questioned, Dawn has learnt.
Meanwhile, four of the derailed coaches of the non-stop Rawalpindi-Lahore train were retrieved on Tuesday, while the remaining two coaches would be pulled out during the next couple of days.
The investigating team has recorded the statements of the 13- member railway team who was on duty on Domeli section on Sunday.
The railway employees being questioned were: Ishtiaq Ahmed, Pervez Akhtar, Dilshad, Arshad Mehmood, Farukh Rehman, Mohammad Sagheer, Sajjad Hussain, Babar Hussain, Khadam Hussain, Mazhar Hussain, Mohammad Basharat, Salman and officer in charge Shaukat Ali.
A source close to the investigation revealed that two of the railway employees — Mohammad Sagheer and Sajjad Hussain — had said in their statements that the spanner and other tools recovered from the scene of the accident had been identified by them as, they said, the tools had been stolen a day before the accident. However, they had not reported the theft incident.
The authorities were also probing into another possibility that the railway employees might have been doing repair work on the track when all of a sudden the train approached there giving them no time to collect the tools.
When a senior railway official was asked by this reporter about this theory, he did not deny, but said usually the railway staff finished their work before sunset and took away their tools with them or placed them at a nearby railway signal room.
He said the probing team had also decided to record statements of some of the passengers who witnessed the incident and reported to the railway authorities. “Chances are there that it was a “tampered track,” the official said.
