At least two people died and around twenty others were injured when a passenger train derailed this morning in Jharkhand, an eastern state of India, according to official sources. The incident prompted emergency responses as rescue teams made their way to the scene and passengers faced the unsettling aftermath of a major rail accident in a region with a busy transportation network.
Public relations officials from the Southeast Railway described the scene in a detailed briefing, noting that two passengers lost their lives, with one person in a critical condition due to multiple fractures. They added that approximately 80 percent of the passengers were transported to Chakradharpur station by bus, and that a rescue train was dispatched to evacuate others from the affected carriages. The accounts from railway authorities emphasize the rapid deployment of emergency services to stabilize the situation and move people to safety as quickly as possible.
The derailment occurred around 3:45 in the morning local time (22:15 GMT on the preceding day) as a passenger train running between the eastern city of Bombay and the eastern hub of Howrah left its tracks while passing through Jharkhand. Visual footage from local television captured several derailed coaches sprawling across the tracks as rescue teams worked to reach those trapped or injured. Passengers who escaped unhurt observed the scene from a distance, while responders focused on assessing the damage and securing the area to prevent further harm.
This accident follows another similar incident just two weeks earlier in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where two people died and about 26 were injured after several coaches derailed. The close temporal proximity of these events has sparked strong political debate and criticism. Opposition figures and former railway minister Mamata Banerjee voiced concerns about what she termed a recurring pattern of railway safety issues, challenging the government to address what she described as ongoing neglect and insufficient protection for travelers on Indian rail networks.
Rail accidents remain a frequent concern in India, a country with one of the world’s longest railway networks. Despite the vast scale of train travel, much of the country’s infrastructure is older and more vulnerable to failure. The most severe rail disaster of the early 21st century in India occurred when a collision between two trains in June last year resulted in hundreds of deaths and a thousand-plus injuries. An official report covering April 2017 through March 2021 highlighted a pattern of derailments as a leading cause of rail incidents, underscoring ongoing safety and maintenance challenges faced by the country’s railways and the critical importance of modernization efforts to protect passengers across the network.