Repair work at a level crossing near Bahanaga Bazar railway station in Odisha’s Balasore was allegedly carried out without the approval of the senior divisional signal and telecommunication engineer and without an approved circuit diagram, where the train accident took place on June 2.
Arguing before a special court in Bhubaneswar, the CBI alleged that one of the reasons behind the accident was the repair work done by Senior Section Engineer (Signal In-charge) Arun Kumar at Level Crossing (LC) Gate No. 94 near Bahanaga Bazar station . Mahant is using the circuit diagram of the second LC gate no. 79, officials said on Thursday.
Refuting the allegations, Mahant claimed that LC Gate no. 94 at Km 255/11-13 was not working properly but higher authorities did not take “proactive action” for the same.
He had said that the concerned supervisory work was assigned to some other person, so he was not responsible for the accident.
The CBI had arrested Mahant and two other railway officials on July 7, 2023, in connection with the investigation of the Balasore triple train accident case, in which 296 people were killed and over 1,200 were injured.
The tragedy occurred when the Coromandel Express rammed into a stationary goods train at Bahanaga Bazar station in Balasore district and some of its derailed coaches collided with the Yesvantpur-Howrah Express on June 2.
A special CBI court in Bhubaneswar recently rejected Mahant’s bail plea, noting that material produced by the CBI prima facie shows his involvement in the case.
“Specific circuit diagram of another LC Gate No. 79 was being used to replace the operation of Level Crossing Gate No. 94 with 110 V AC, at the time of execution of wiring work being done at North Gumti of Bahanaga Bazar Railway Station 24 V DC,” the CBI submitted before the court.
It added that as per the manual, the present accused petitioner was to ensure that the testing, overhauling and alterations of the existing signal and interlocking installations were carried out as per the approved plan and instructions.
The court, referring to the submissions of the CBI, said, “It is further found that no such step was taken by the accused which led to the accident and in the said accident more than 296 passengers died and many passengers were seriously injured.” Have become.”
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content was auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)