The probe report by the Chief Commissioner of Railway Safety in the horrific Amritsar train tragedy has come up giving clean chit to the railways. The dreadful accident occurred during Dussehra celebrations last month. The whole nation mourned as the dreadful incident claimed 60 lives while people were watching the on-going celebrations.
CCRS S K Pathak in the report said, “Having carefully considered the factual material and circumstantial evidences so far available at my disposal, I have provisionally come to the conclusion that the unfortunate incident of running over of 60 persons near Jaura-Fatak near Amritsar railway station of Ferozpur division of Northern Railways on October 19, 2018 at 6:55 pm occurred due to the negligence of persons reportedly standing on and near railway track witnessing Dussehra Mela at Dhobi Ghat.”
Pathak has further categorised the accident as “Error in working by public near railway line” and made a number of recommendations to avoid such accidents in the future. During the enquiry, Pathak observed that the spot of the incident was not visible till the train was within 20 metres of the revellers due to the S-curve. Also, the incident took place at a time when there was smoke in the air due to fire crackers and burning of Ravan’s effigy.
The report also states that while the permissible speed on this section was 100 kmph, the train was running at a speed of 82 kmph when the loco pilot saw the crowd and applied brakes. In the trial, it was seen that the braking distance of the train was 389 metres. Also, for a matter of fact ‘loco drivers don’t hit or crush someone intentionally’. It happens because they don’t get enough braking distance. It actually depends on visibility as in daytime it has better visibility than at night. During the daytime, visibility is around 1000-1200 meters and at night it gets reduced to 100-200 meters only.
While the entire nation was mourning the tragic mishap of Amritsar, the left-liberal journalists were indulged in petty reporting with the hope of cashing in for their political masters. Within minutes of the tragedy, the Lutyens’ media went up in arms trying to blame the Railway Minister and the entire central government for the unprecedented and grievous tragedy.
Claiming itself to be an unbiased media outfit, ‘The Wire’ immediately came out with a video probing the entire incident. Abhisar Sharma could be seen in the video where he tried hard to decode the reason behind the incident but failed miserably as tfipost.com promptly destroyed Abhisar Sharma’s shady attempt.
After facing embarrassment, ‘The Wire’ then deleted the whole video. Now that the probe has clearly stated that the spot of the accident was not visible till the train was within 20 meters of the crowd of revellers due to an S-curve on the route, will Abhisar Sharma apologise for his prompt attempt to present a false report? Will ‘The Wire’ take any action against the fake news peddlers like Abhisar Sharma?
The whole nation wants to know the reason why Railways Minister Piyush Goyal was being alleged for an incident about which the reports states that there were 50 policemen present at the spot and despite them trying to move the crowd away from the tracks, the people did not oblige?
Why Abhisar or ‘The Wire’ didn’t enquire from the organizers whether they had given prior notice to concerned authorities before organizing such an event near railway tracks in Amritsar? The Wire and Abhisar Sharma should not come out with fake news and misguide the masses with false propaganda which can cause unrest in the country.