New Delhi, 6 June (EFE). – India’s Central Investigation Committee (CBI), one of the country’s key agencies, on Tuesday took over the investigation into the train crash that killed 275 and injured more than a thousand. although Indian authorities claimed to have identified the cause and those responsible.
A CBI team arrived this morning in Balasore district in the eastern state of Odisha, where India’s worst rail accident of the 21st century happened last Friday when two passenger trains and a freight train collided, India’s PTI said.
The involvement of the investigating authority came after the Minister of Railways, Ashwini Vaishnaw, assured last Sunday that he had applied for the involvement of the authority in parallel to the involvement carried out by the ministry itself.
However, on the same day, Vaishnaw claimed to have identified the cause of the accident and those responsible. The minister cited a problem with the automatic signaling system as the reason for the crash, but did not give any further details.
The CBI investigation drew criticism from the opposition.
A senior official of the historic Nehru Gandhi Dynasty (INC) Congress Party (INC), Jairam Ramesh, called it an attempt to “manage headlines” and divert attention even before the railway safety commissioner releases his own findings.
“The purpose of the CBI is to investigate crimes, not train accidents. The CBI or any other body responsible for enforcing the law cannot identify responsibilities for technical, institutional and political failures and does not have the necessary knowledge,” the party’s President Mallikarjun Kharge condemned in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
It is the deadliest train accident in India since two trains collided in August 1999 in the northeastern state of West Bengal, killing 288 people. About 800 people died in 1981 when a train derailed while crossing a bridge and plunged into a river in northern Bihar state.
At 68,000 kilometers long, the Indian railway network is the fourth largest in the world behind the USA, Russia and China, has around 21,650 trains and 7,349 stations across the country and carries around 23 million passengers every day. passengers. EFE
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