Fire kills nine on Dehradun Express

At least nine passengers were charred to death while travelling on the Mumbai-Dehradun Express when a fire engulfed three coaches in the wee hours of this morning.

The train, which leaves Bandra Terminus around midnight, was speeding north of Dahanu Road station in Thane district at around 2.30am, when the fire broke out as most passengers were asleep. Senior Railway officers rushed to the spot.

Western Railway spokesman Sharat Chandrayan said that four of the dead are yet to be identified. Among the other five, four were men and one was a woman. Others have sustained ''minor'' injuries.

Railway minister Mallikarjun Kharge of the Congress did not of course offer to resign – instead, he announced an ex-gratia payment of Rs5 lakh to the next of kin of those killed, and ordered inquiry into the mishap.

Divisional railway manager Shailendra Kumar said that the people identified had died to suffocation by the smoke. The other bodies were charred beyond recognition.

"The fire was noticed on the speeding train by a level-crossing gateman who alerted the guard. The guard informed the driver, who applied the emergency brakes. The gateman and the guard did a commendable job and averted a major disaster," Chandrayan said. ''The three coaches were isolated to prevent the fire from spreading.''

Accident relief vans were rushed from Mumbai and Gujarat and the injured have been admitted to hospitals in Dahanu and Gholwad, the officials said.

Railways officials have privately admitted that a short circuit is likely to have caused the fire, as unsecured cables were found in the S3 bogie.

The accident comes within days of the Bangalore train tragedy in which 26 people, including two children, were killed and 12 injured when a fire broke out in the Bangalore-Nanded Express at Kothacheruvu near Puttaparthi. This time it has hit the Dehradun Express, the oldest express service in the history of Indian Railways.

The repeated incidents of railway disasters hardly make headlines any more. But as experts have long been pointing out, the railways has been forced to compromise heavily on the maintenance and upkeep of rolling stock in order to keep passenger fares low.