BAHANAGA: An official probe into India’s rail crash is focusing on suspected manual bypassing of an automated signalling system that guides train movement — an action investigators believe sent a packed express train into a stationary freight train, three Indian Railways sources said.

The Commission of Railway Safety (CRS) investigators suspect the bypass was done by railway workers to get around signalling hurdles that arose from a malfunctioning barrier used to stop road traffic at a nearby rail-road intersection, two of the three sources said.

The sources did not want to be identified as they are not authorised to speak to the media.

The June 2 crash at Bahanaga Bazar station, in the Balasore district of the eastern Indian state of Odisha, killed at least 288 people and injured more than 1,000. It was India’s worst rail crash in two decades.

Indian and international media have previously reported that a possible malfunction in the automated signalling system may have led to the crash.

However, details of the frequent malfunctions at the nearby rail-road barrier and its possible connection to a manual bypass of the signalling system are reported by this news agency for the first time.

“Erratic barrier”

Indian Railways, the fourth largest train network in the world, is a state monopoly run by the Railway Board. The board reports to the Railways Ministry.

A spokesman for Indian Railways said “repair works keep happening as per requirements” but tampering with the automated system is not allowed. He declined to elaborate further on the causes of the crash, saying: “the investigation is on”.

Amitabh Sharma, chief information officer at the Railways Ministry, said the cause of the accident was still under investigation. Asked about investigators’ suspicions that the electronic system may have been manually bypassed, Sharma said: “These are all speculations which we cannot confirm at this juncture.” A spokesman for the federal polices Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which has opened a separate probe into possible criminal negligence, did not respond to a request for comment.

News agency spoke to five residents of Bahanaga village who said the barrier at the railway crossing had been faulty for nearly three months and had been repaired frequently.

When there was a fault, the barrier would remain stuck in the closed position and had to be manually opened by railway workers, the residents said.

If the barrier was open, the automated signal system would not allow a train to go past the rail-road crossing, one retired Indian Railways official said. The official did not want to be identified due to the sensitivity of the crash investigation.

“The electric barrier would sometimes go up and sometimes it wouldnt,” said Soubhagya Ranjan Sarangi, 25, a pharmacist with a shop close to the railway crossing.

Niranjan Sarangi, a 66-year-old retired school teacher who spends many evenings sitting near the crossing with friends, was there at the time of the crash. He said the barrier seemed to be functioning fine at the time.

“The barrier would malfunction sometimes. People from the department would come and fix it,” he said.

Published in Dawn, June 12th, 2023