Bangalore: A day after the horrific incident in Anantapur district where an AC coach of the Bangalore-Nanded Express caught fire and claimed 26 lives, DNA testing continued in full swing at the Victoria Hospital mortuary where anxious families gathered in the hope that their kin were not among the dead.
As of Sunday evening, the identities of 20 bodies had been confirmed, and eight were already handed over to their relatives for the final rites.
However, six more bodies are yet to be recognised.
“We have collected blood and liver samples from these six bodies and will try to match with various family members through DNA verification.
However, the results will take another three days,” said senior railways official Ramesh.
Mourning the loss of a newlywed couple who were both employed as techies in the city, their relative Ramacharan said, “We did not want to assume the worst when we heard of the tragedy. My cousin Srilatha and her husband Shrinivas had gotten married barely six months ago, and their names were not on the initial list of those killed in the fire, so we hoped they were missing. Unfortunately, when we visited the mortuary yesterday, we were able to recognise both their bodies since the faces were mostly intact.”
However, the relatives said that they wanted confirmation through DNA verification. “A number of other families have also claimed Shrinivas’ body, so we want to be a hundred percent sure before going ahead with any other procedures,” Ramacharan added.
Meanwhile, it was a miraculous escape for 70-year-old Sudhakar who was fast asleep in the adjoining coach.
“My father suddenly woke up to screams of women and children and realised something was wrong. The smoke from B1 had not yet seeped into their compartment, and somebody pulled the chain, causing the train to stop. My father immediately jumped out and saw that the coach had become a raging inferno and had been detached from the rest of the train,” said Sudhakar’s son, Guru.
The cause of the fire is yet to be ascertained, but railway officials suspect that an electrical short circuit started off the blaze which was then fuelled by the plywood panelling inside the ill-fated bogey, along with inflammable material that had reportedly been stored overhead.
The unbreakable double glass windows allowed no escape and most passengers died of suffocation from the acrid smoke, even before the flames consumed them.
