Thought driver applied brakes, say eyewitness

Hyderabad: Passengers aboard the Lingampally-Falaknuma MMTS and the Kurnool-Secunderabad Hundry Intercity Express trains suffered a shock when they experienced the ripples of a crash.

The passengers initially thought that their driver might have applied a sudden brake, but only when they stepped out, did they realise that their train had a head-on collision with another.

M. Ramchandra Reddy, a Home Guard working with the Railway Protection Force (RPF) was in an MMTS coach. He was posted on guard duty and was in the seventh coach from the loco pilot’s cabin. His colleague Anji, was in the fifth coach.

After the accident, Mr Reddy quickly moved to the Kacheguda railway station to prevent onlookers and public from entering the accident spot.

Speaking to DC, he said, “My colleague and I were on duty. The sudden jerk shook us. I did not receive any injuries. After getting down, I searched for my colleague Anji, he suffered mild bruises. I asked him to take rest and joined other colleagues in shifting the injured to the hospital. I am here now to prevent the public from entering the area.”

When asked about the incident, Mr Reddy said, “The MMTS was on the platform for about five minutes, which was more than the usual time. Soon after it started, it met with an accident. We are not sure whether the loco pilot was given a signal to start the train or some other miscommunication took place.”

P. Sudhakar, another passenger, a government employee from Gujarat, who was on the Hundry Intercity Express, shared his frightening experience. Mr Sudhakar, along with his wife and two children, had boarded the train at Wanaparthy road to go to Secunderabad, from where, they planned to catch the Secunderabad-Rajkot Express to Gujarat.

Recollecting the incident, he said, “Along with my family, I boarded the Hundry Express. We saw the train entering the Kacheguda railway station, when, all of a sudden, we felt a big jerk. Some passengers sitting on upper berths fell down. We thought that the driver had applied a sudden brake. Some passengers stepped down and saw that our train had rammed into another train.”

“Passengers were frightened. Though no one suffered any bleeding injuries on our train, we heard that the loco pilot was stuck in the cabin. As the incident took place at the station, passengers vacated the train. Within a short time, police and rescue teams reached the spot,” he said.

Mr Sudhakar said, “Due to the accident, our train to Gujarat got delayed by an hour and could catch it.”

Mishap throws train services into a disarray

The collision between an MMTS train and the Hun-dry Intercity Express at the Kacheguda station caused a major disruption in rail traffic in the city throughout the day.

Since the collision took place in the morning, MMTS commuters heading for work faced inconvenience.

Trains coming to Kache-guda from Nizamabad were curtailed at Medchal, while those arriving from Kurnool were halted at Umdanagar. Some trains were cancelled in their entirety, including the Kurnool-Secunderabad, Kacheguda-Bodhan, Falaknuma-Jangaon and Secunderabad- Kurnool trains.

On Tuesday, the train from Kacheguda to Yesh-wantpur (Bengaluru) will originate from Secunder-abad at 4 am. Likewise, trains to Srikakulam and Manguluru Central will originate from Secunde-rabad instead of Kache-guda.