Vellore: Over 20 persons were injured as 11 coaches of a Bengaluru- bound train derailed near here on Friday severely hitting rail traffic in the Chennai-Jolarpet section of the Southern Railway and leading to cancellation of several trains from the Tamil Nadu capital.
Official sources said that 11 coaches of the Kanyakumari-Bangalore city express derailed between Somanayakanpatti and Patchur in Tamil Nadu. However, local police said that no casualty has been reported in the incident. The railway spokesperson said that the injured have been moved to nearby hospitals while senior officials have rushed to the site of the derailment at Natrampalli, about 140km from Bengaluru.
While arrangements were made to transport the stranded train passengers to Bengaluru, at the scene of the mishap, the derailment looked pretty ghastly, notwithstanding lower number of casualties this time.
The derailment occurred due to suspected rail fracture, an official source said in New Delhi, as quoted in a news agency report, but the railway spokesperson said that the cause of the accident was yet to be ascertained.
The Railways also operationalised a help-line number for passengers and their kin to get assistance. Meanwhile, The Southern Railway said in a release that 11 trains were cancelled on both directions on the Chennai-Bengaluru route. These included Chennai Central-Bengaluru Double Decker Express, Chennai-Bengaluru Brindavan Express, Chennai Central-Bengaluru Lalbaugh Express, Chennai Central-Bengaluru Express, Bengaluru Express-Arakonam Passenger and Jolarpettai-Bengaluru Express. The service of Chennai-Mysore Shatabdi Express was partially cancelled, the release said.
