New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said in a press release on Friday, July 7 that it had arrested three railway personnel in connection with the June 2 Balasore train accident that killed 292 people in Odisha.
According to news reports, the three rail employees arrested are senior section engineer Arun Kumar Mahanta, section engineer Mohammad Amir Khan and technician Pappu Kumar under Sections 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender) of the Indian Penal Code.
The central probe agency was investigating alleged human interference with the signal and the sabotage angle, and the three employees have been arrested in connection with that matter.
One of the employees arrested, Mahanta, wrote a dissent note to the railways’ first interna report on the accident.
Titled ‘Dissent note regarding joint finding report on derailment at BNBR yard on 02.06.2023’, the one page handwritten and signed note is dated June 3, 2023 and says, “I did not agree with point no-4 [of the preliminary report] which mention as the point 17 A was found set for up loop line. Based on observation from Data logger report the point 17 was set for normal side. It may be reverse after derailment (sic).”
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Earlier, the Commission of Railway Safety’s investigation had pointed to multiple lapses, saying that the tragedy could have been averted if past warnings had not been ignored.
It had found that the wires inside the level-crossing location box had been wrongly labelled and this stayed undetected for years, leading to a mix-up during maintenance work.
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This eventually led to the Coromandel Express crashing into two other trains – Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express and a goods train.
