Rescuers worked through the night to pull people out of mangled coaches after an overnight passenger train derailed early Sunday in northern India, killing at least 115 people, police said.

The death toll was expected to rise further because rescue workers had yet to gain access to one of the worst-damaged of the 14 coaches that derailed, said Daljeet Chaudhary, a director general of police. About 150 people were injured, he said.

The train derailed at around 3:10 a.m., jolting awake passengers who had settled in for the long trip. Survivors and bodies were retrieved from mangled coaches that had fallen on their side.

Ramchandra Tewari, a passenger who suffered a head injury, said he was asleep when he was suddenly flung to the floor of his coach.

"There was a loud sound like an earthquake. I fell from my berth and a lot of luggage fell over me," Tewari told reporters from his hospital bed in the city of Kanpur. "I thought I was dead, and then I passed out."

Another passenger, Satish Kumar, said the train was traveling at normal speed when it stopped suddenly.

"It restarted, and then we heard a crash," Kumar, whose coach remained standing on the track, said at the derailment site. "When we came out of the train, we saw a few coaches had derailed."

The cause of the derailment was not immediately clear. Accidents are relatively common on India's sprawling rail network, which is the world's third largest but lacks modern signaling and communication systems. Most accidents are blamed on poor maintenance and human error.

The impact of the derailment was so strong that one of the coaches landed on top of another, crushing the one below, said Brig. Anurag Chibber, who was heading the army's rescue team.

"We fear there could be many more dead in the lower coach," he said, adding that it was unclear how many people were in the coach.

Javeed Ahmad, the police chief of Uttar Pradesh state, where the derailment took place, said 115 bodies had been recovered from the wreckage.

The derailment occurred near the village of Pukhrayan, outside of Kanpur, an industrial city about 400 kilometers (250 miles) southeast of New Delhi. The Patna-Indore Express train, linking the central Indian city of Indore to the city of Patna to its northeast, completes its 1,360-kilometer (845-mile) journey in 27 hours.

Rescue workers, soldiers and members of India's disaster management force reached Pukhrayan within an hour of the derailment and began pulling out people trapped in the overturned coaches.

Rescuers used cutting torches to open the derailed train cars to try to reach those trapped inside, while cranes were deployed to lift the coaches from the tracks. However, rescuers moved cautiously because some of the coaches were precariously tilted, and there was a danger that they could topple over, possibly injuring those trapped inside.

"We are being very careful in using the cutting torches," Chaudhary said.

Medical teams provided first aid near the site, while the more seriously injured were moved to hospitals in Kanpur, Chaudhary said. Of the roughly 150 injured, 72 were in serious condition, he said.

Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu arrived at the site by Sunday evening to monitor the rescue and relief operations. He said a special train has been arranged to take passengers from the derailed train to Patna, according to the PTI news agency. He said thousands of food packets, water bottles and cups of tea were being provided to the stranded passengers.

Anxious relatives of passengers searched for their family members among the injured and the dead at hospitals in Kanpur.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his concern over the derailment.

"Anguished beyond words on the loss of lives due to the derailing of the Patna-Indore express. My thoughts are with the bereaved families," Modi posted on his Twitter account.

Kanpur is a major railway junction, and hundreds of trains pass through the city every day. After the derailment, several trains using the line were diverted to other routes, Anil Saxena, spokesman for Indian Railways, said in New Delhi.

Rail authorities have ordered an investigation into the incident, Saxena said.

In 2012, an Indian government report said about 15,000 people are killed every year in train accidents in the country, caused mainly by outdated equipment and overstretched staff.

The country's worst railway accident occurred in 1981, when a passenger train fell into the Baghmati River in northern India, killing nearly 800 people.

Prime Minister Modi has pledged to invest $137 billion over the next five years to modernize India's railway network, which is used by around 23 million passengers a day.</s>Morning visuals from the site of train derailment. ANI photo Morning visuals from the site of train derailment. ANI photo

The Patna-Indore express train derailed near Pukharayan district of Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh on Sunday morning. As per initial reports, at least 60 people have lost their lives in the accident. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav also took cognizance of the issue and asked the DGP to personally monitor relief operations.

Indore Patna Express derails: LIVE UPDATES

The Indian Railways has issued helpline numbers for those seeking information:

Jhansi-05101072

Orai-051621072

Kanpur-05121072

Pokhrayan-05113-270239

Please note helpline nos All calls are attended to help anyone needing assistance pic.twitter.com/9aEsXalwR0 — Suresh Prabhu (@sureshpprabhu) November 20, 2016

The reports suggest that accident happened at 5 in the morning . “14 coaches of Indore-Patna exp derailed near Kanpur. We are yet to confirm the total number of casualties. Rescue operations are underway,” Anil Saxena, Indian Railways spokesperson said.

Read | Kanpur: 14 coaches of Patna Indore express derail near Pukhrayan, at least 20 dead

Medical teams have been rushed to the spot to attend to the injured. The reason for derailment is not yet clear. Further details are awaited.

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© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd</s>PUKHRAYAN, India/NEW DELHI, India (Reuters) - At least 119 people were killed and more than 150 injured when an Indian express train derailed near Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh on Sunday, with the toll set to rise amid a scramble to locate survivors.

Rescue workers search for survivors at the site of a train derailment in Pukhrayan, south of Kanpur city, November 20, 2016. REUTERS/Jitendra Prakash

Police officials said people were still missing as authorities tried to determine what caused 14 carriages of the train travelling between Patna and Indore to suddenly roll off the tracks in Pukhrayan, 65 km south of Kanpur city.

Authorities said they were checking the condition of the tracks but would need to look further before concluding the cause of the derailment, India’s deadliest rail tragedy since more than 140 died in a 2010 collision in West Bengal.

Desperate survivors searched for family members and some tried to enter the damaged carriages to rescue relatives and collect belongings, said senior railway official Pratap Rai.

“We are using every tactic to save lives but it’s very difficult to cut the metal carriages,” he said from the accident site.

Kanpur district magistrate Kaushal Raj Sharma told Reuters that 119 people were confirmed dead, while 78 of the injured remained in hospital, four of them in a critical condition.

With rescue teams still looking for victims amid the wreckage, the toll from the derailment could rise to become India’s worst rail tragedy in this century.

In what was probably India’s worst rail disaster, a train plunged off a bridge and into a river in 1981 in Bihar state, killing an estimated 500 to 800 people.

India’s creaking railway system is the world’s fourth largest. It runs 11,000 trains a day, including 7,000 passenger trains carrying more than 20 million people. But it has a poor safety record, with thousands of people dying in accidents every year, including in train derailments and collisions.

Suresh Prabhu, India’s railways minister, said in a tweet that the government would investigate the causes of the derailment and promised accountability with the “strictest possible action”, as well as compensation for the affected passengers.

The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin had contacted Prime Minister Narendra Modi and “passed on words of sympathy and support to the relatives and loved ones of the dead and wished a fast recovery of the injured.”

MANGLED CARRIAGES

The packed train, operated by the government, derailed in the early hours of Sunday when more than 500 passengers were sleeping, survivors said.

TV footage showed mangled blue carriages, with crowds of people and police on top of the wreckage searching for survivors. One carriage was almost lying on its side and appeared to have been completely torn apart.

Rescue officials with yellow helmets worked their way through the crowds, carrying victims from the wreckage as teams struggled to remove the derailed wagons from the tracks, one of the main transportation routes for goods and passengers in northern India.

“Suddenly I could feel that the carriage was overturning. I immediately held the metal rod near the bathroom door,” said Faizal Khan, who was travelling with his wife and two children, all of whom survived the accident.

Another survivor, Rajdeep Tanwar, said. “I can see bodies lying near the tracks, everyone is in a state of shock. There is no water or food for us.”

Buses were being pressed into service to help passengers complete their journey, said police additional director general Daljeet Singh Choudhary.

Rescue teams said they would conclude the search operation before night fall and resume it on Monday. Nearby villagers set up temporary kitchens and erected tents for survivors and officials.

PUSH TO MODERNISE

Modi, who started out selling tea outside a train station, has promised to modernise India’s railways and build high-speed lines befitting Asia’s third-largest economy.

His government has pledged to replace old tracks and upgrade security infrastructure but little progress has been made so far. More than 90 percent of the railways’ revenues are spent on operational costs, leaving next to nothing for modernisation.

By some analyst estimates, the railways need 20 trillion rupees ($293.34 billion) of investment by 2020, and India is turning to partnerships with private companies and seeking loans from other countries to upgrade its network.

Last year, Japan agreed to provide $12 billion in soft loans to build India’s first bullet train.

Slideshow (12 Images)

On Sunday, Modi took to Twitter to express his condolences.

“Anguished beyond words on the loss of lives due to the derailing of the Patna-Indore express. My thoughts are with the bereaved families,” Modi said.

($1 = 68.1805 Indian rupees)</s>Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu at the Indore-Patna Express derailment site at Pukhraya station near Kanpur on Sunday.

Railway Minister promises strictest action against those found responsible for derailment

Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu has ordered an inquiry by the Commissioner, Railway Safety, (Northern Region) into the train derailment near Kanpur that killed 121 people early on Sunday, even as he rushed to the spot and the government announced compensation.

“Enhanced amount of ex gratia compensation to the victims of this unfortunate accident: Rs. 3.5 L in case of death,” Mr. Prabhu tweeted. “Rs.50 thousand in case of grievous injury and Rs.25 thousand in case of simple injury. This is in addition to the compensation which will be available through Railway Claims Tribunal.”

“PM @narendramodi has announced ex gratia of Rs. 2 lakhs from PMNRF for the next of kin of those killed in the rail accident in Uttar Pradesh. The assistance announced by PM @narendramodi is over and above any assistance announced by the Railways,” the PMO tweeted. “PM @narendramodi has also announced Rs. 50,000 for those seriously injured in the rail accident in Uttar Pradesh.”

“Rail, Dist, state, NDRF teams are geared up to deal with the accident & offer all kind of help. We r doing our best to deal with sad accident,” Mr. Prabhu tweeted.

He said food, tea and water was being provided to the injured and relatives free of cost. A special Kanpur-Patna was being arranged for the passengers.</s>NEW DELHI — Fourteen coaches of an Indian train derailed early Sunday, killing at least 108 people in one of the worst rail accidents here in recent years, the police said.

At least 75 others were admitted to hospitals, many of them with head injuries and fractures, and the death toll was likely to rise, said Rahul Srivastav, a spokesman for the police in Uttar Pradesh State, where the derailment took place.

The accident occurred at 3 a.m. about a mile from the Pukhrayan railway station, about 40 miles southwest of the northern city of Kanpur, on a train bound for Patna, the capital of Bihar State.</s>The death toll from India's rail disaster rose to 142 on Monday after workers toiled through the night removing victims from the wreckage, with grim warnings that more bodies were trapped inside.

There was little hope of finding survivors among the mangled remains of 14 carriages, which came off the tracks on Sunday in a rural district of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

"The actual toll will still be higher and it would be a difficult task to identify all the persons, particularly those whose bodies are very badly damaged," a senior local government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"We do not have an exact figure for the injured as of now. Rescue work is still going on," said district police chief Zaki Ahmad as workers cleared the most severely damaged carriages.</s>Four sleeper coaches — S1, S2, S3, S4 — of the Indore-Patna Express were badly damaged in the accident. Photo: Rajeev Bhatt

Rescue operation is in progress at the accident site where 14 coaches of the Indore-Patna Express dertailed near Kanpur on Sunday. Photo: Rajeev Bhatt

Over 200 injured in derailment, likely to have been caused by rail fracture.

At least 121 persons were killed and over 200 injured as 14 bogies of the Patna-bound Indore-Rajendranagar Express went off the track in Kanpur Dehat district of Uttar Pradesh in the early hours of Sunday.

The derailment took place between the Pukhrayan and Malasa stations along the Jhansi-Kanpur section at 3.10 a.m. While the S3 and S4 sleeper coaches were thrown off on to the nearby fields, S1 and S2 in front of them bore the brunt, as the coaches smashed into each other leaving behind mangled iron.

The third AC coach B3 was also heavily damaged. Such was the intensity of the impact that survivors compared it to the shock of a “tremor.”

Sixty-three bodies, including 12 women and a child, were identified till 8 p.m. Among the dead, 20 belonged to U.P., 13 M.P. and five Bihar, a police spokesperson said.

While the cause of the derailment is not known, railway officials suspect a rail fracture. In addition to the other departmental inquiries by the Railways, P.K. Acharya, Commissioner, Railway Safety, Eastern Circle, Kolkata will hold the statutory inquiry on Monday and Tuesday, a north central railway spokesperson informed.

Calling it a “major accident,” S.K. Agarwal, DRM, Jhansi division, said the cause could not be ascertained right away, even as he hinted there was no tampering with the track.

“The Sabarmati Express crossed the same track nine minutes earlier. It would have reported any fault. The driver felt no jerks. It is difficult to point out a reason at this moment,” Mr. Agarwal told The Hindu.</s>Rescue operation is in progress at the accident site, on Monday, where more than 140 people were killed as 14 coaches of the Indore-Patna Express ran off the tracks near Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh on Sunday. Photo: Rajeev Bhatt

At least 146 people have been killed and around 200 others injured, several of them grievously, in the Patna-bound train.

The probe into the Indore-Patna Express derailment, that has claimed at least 146 lives, began on Monday with Commissioner of Railway Safety P K Acharya visiting the accident site and inspecting the broken track and the mangled bogies.

“The commissioner of railway safety (eastern circle) reached the accident site here and closely inspected the broken railway track and the damaged coaches,” Deputy General Manager North Central Railway (NCR) Amit Mishra told PTI.

The entire inspection as well as the accident site was videographed. Railway engineers and technical staff were asked questioned in connection with the derailment by the railway safety commissioner, he said.

Mr. Mishra said people who were travelling in the train and have any information with regard to the accident, can share it with Mr. Acharya. He will be available at the Kanpur Railway Station from morning till evening on November 22 and 23 and will use the inputs while preparing the investigation report.

Mr. Acharya’s visit to the site comes a day after Deputy Chief Safety Officer, Allahabad, Ram Surat Singh, wrote to the NCR about a “statutory enquiry” by the railway safety commissioner regarding the accident that took place between Pukhrayan-Malsa stations.

The letter, while seeking necessary logistics arrangement for the probe, said the inquiry will be held at the office of the deputy chief traffic manager (CTM), Kanpur Central Railway station on November 22 and 23.

Earlier in the day, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu told Lok Sabha that a statutory inquiry by the commissioner of railway safety has been ordered to find the cause of the accident as he promised “strictest possible action” against the guilty. He also said latest technical and forensic analysis will be used for a thorough investigation.

Fourteen coaches of Indore-Patna Express derailed in Kanpur Dehat in the wee hours yesterday due to suspected rail fracture.

The commissioner of railway safety comes under the Ministry of Civil Aviation.

At least 146 people have been killed and around 200 others injured, several of them grievously, in the Patna-bound train 19321.

Javed Ahmed, UP Director General of Police (DGP) said the bodies have been kept in the mortuary. “We are hoping that we will be able to shift the bodies very soon,” he said.

A case is being registered and the investigation will follow, he said, adding that “obviously, many things have to be seen“.

“Our focus was on rescue and is now on relief. Now, we will get into investigation and in the next one—two days, things will be clear. Rescue work has been completed and we are looking at other things,” Ahmed said.

State Home Secretary Debasish Panda said, “We have been monitoring relief and rescue operations since yesterday. Our priority is to provide relief and hand over the bodies to the families after the due legal process including post-mortem.”

He said that 123 of the deceased have been identified and the process to hand over the bodies to the families has been started.

“Our RTO (Regional Transport Office) officers are also present to arrange vehicles for the families to take the bodies. A team from Bihar and Madhya Pradesh is here and we are coordinating with them,” Panda said.</s>The latest information that has reached Patna Junction is that the death toll has gone up to 63 with over 150 injured.

Relatives of those who were killed in the Indore-Rajendra Nagar Express train derailment near Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh are harried lot at Patna Junction. No official information or special arrangement has been made by the railways for them.

The latest information that has reached Patna Junction is that the death toll has gone up to 63 with over 150 injured.

Radhakant Tiwari of Nalanda district was running from one corner of the platform to other seeking information about his brother Ramakant Tiwari who was traveling in the train. “Nobody is here to provide any information...they GRP (Government Railway Police) officials have just given us the helpline number to seek more information”, Radhakant Tiwari told The Hindu.

“There is no arrangement for people like us to take us to the accident site…I’m waiting for a train to reach Mugalsarai first and from there I’ll go to the accident site”, he said.

However, when he rang up at his brother’s mobile number, someone else picked up the phone and told him that the person having the phone has been killed in the accident.

“Except this I’ve no further information…what I should do I don’t know”, he said.

The other relatives who turned up at the Patna railway platform to seek information about those who were travelling in the train too seemed clueless.

“No Railway official is here to support us with any further information…they’re just giving (us) the helpline number to call,” said an anxious middle-aged relative, Ramesh Kumar.

Meanwhile, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and former railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav have condoled death of those killed in the accident.

Fourteen coaches of the Patna-bound Indore-Rajendra Nagar express train had derailed near Pukhrayan in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh in the early hours of Sunday morning.</s>At least 126 people were killed and over 200 injured, when Patna-bound 19321 Indore- Patna express train derailed near Pukhraya station in Kanpur Dehat district today. Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) Daljeet Choudhury told UNI here tonight that the death toll has crossed 126, while 200 people were injured, out of which the condition of 26 was stated to be critical.

He did not rule out the increase in death toll as several injured were critical. The ADG said 50 bodies have been identified so far and efforts were on to identify the remaining. The rescue operation has been completed and all 14 derailed bogies have been removed from the tracks and repair works were underway. The route is expected to be cleared by tomorrow morning.
At least 142 people are killed and over 200 injured as the Indore–Patna Express derails near Pukhrayan in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.