<< The death toll in the Howrah-Kalka Mail derailment rose to 68 on Monday.
The death toll in the Howrah-Kalka Mail derailment rose to 68 on Monday as the two train operators regained consciousness in a government hospital to shed light on what may have caused the wreck.
Top Railway officials who met the injured drivers A K Singh and Uma Kant Yadav quoted them as saying that when the train was at around 108kmph, its rear bogies began wobbling. The drivers tried to reduce the speed, bringing it down to nearly 70kmph, said the officials. When Singh and Yadav felt the wobbling did not stop, they applied the emergency brake.
"The next moment, all the bogies crashed into one another," the officials said quoting the drivers. The impact threw the drivers off and both lost consciousness, they said.
Nearly 260 injured passengers are admitted to different hospitals in Fatehpur, Allahabad and Kanpur. Two Swedish nationals were among the dead. One Swedish passenger is in a Kanpur hospital with multiple injuries.
