At least three people were killed and 50 others injured when a train rammed a truck at an unguarded level crossing at Nandalalpur of Pagla in Narayanganj on Monday morning.
The deceased were Mohammad Jasim Uddin, 45, a resident of Chashara, Mohammad Shahid, 40, of Muslimpara in Narayanganj and Begum Akter, 50, of Uttar Chashara. All the deceased were the passengers of the train. They died at Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
Witnesses and police said that the accident occurred when the Dhaka-bound passenger train hit a truck bound for Mawa on the unguarded Nandalalpur level crossing at around 9:30am.
Quoting train driver Babar Ali, who is undergoing treatment along with his assistant at the DMCH, the sources said that the engine of the wood-laden truck had stopped when it was crossing the railway tracks.
‘When the engine stopped suddenly on the rails, I tried to give the engine a restart. When the attempts failed, we left the truck as the train came close,’ Babar Ali said.
‘Within moments, we saw the train toss the truck out into a slum along the tracks,’ he said.
The people sitting at the front of the locomotive, the train driver and his assistant and a number of pedestrians were injured.
Among the injured, eight were admitted to the DMCH. They were Khadija Begum, 25, Monwar Hossain, 30, Ranu Begum, 22, train driver Babar Ali, 25, his assistant Alauddin Ali, 30, Ziaul Alam, 38, and Ekram Hossain, 50. The identity of another injured could not be known immediately.
The rest of the injured were admitted to Mitfort Hospital in Dhaka, Khanpur Hospital in Naryanganj and other clinics.
Nine people were admitted to DMCH with critical injuries, 16 to Khanpur Hospital, 13 to Midfort Hospital, 10 to different clinics at Matuail.
The injured admitted to Khanpur Hospital were identified as Anwar, 40, Shuvo, 12, Monir Hossain 40, Iyar Ham 45, Hasan 35, Sultan 30, Asmatullah 45, Kalachan, 45, Shahjahan, 40, Shuma 20, Abdul Hai, 60, Delwar Hossain, 40, Marium, 55, Sabina, 25, and her 11-month old daughter Sumaiya.
Sub-inspector Abul Kalam Azad said that the police had rescued several injured train passengers and taken them to different hospitals and clinics.
Local lawmaker Sharah Begum Kobori, railway director general Touhidul Anwar Chowdhury, additional police supper Saidur Rahman and upajila nirbahi officer Motahar Hossain visited the spot.
After visiting the spot, the railwas DG told reporters that the level crossing at Nandalalpur was illegal.
Fatullah railway station master Golam Mostofa said that the accident had occurred soon after the train left the station around 9:30am.
Fatullah police officer-in-charge Jiban Kanti Sircar could not give any figures of causalities.
Relatives of the train passengers crowded the spot and later went to different hospitals in Narayanganj and Dhaka.
Train services between Dhaka and Narayanganj remained suspended till filing of this report at 2:00pm.
The railway authorities on Monday afternoon formed a six-member committee to investigate the accident.
Bangladesh Railway’s Dhaka division manager Mohammad Nizam Uddin on Monday told reporters that the committee, headed by Benu Ranjan Sarker, a divisional signal trainee engineer, was asked to submit the report within 48 hours.
On February 19, sixteen people were killed and more than 60 injured in separate collisions between trains and buses at unguarded level crossings in Jessore and Comilla, the police and hospital sources said.
Courtesy of New Age
