Indian Railways says 30,000 died due to ‘trespassing, untoward incidents’ in 3 years

After the Niti Aayog raised questions over Indian Railways' zero fatality claim in the last fiscal, the top official of the national transporter on Thursday said that nearly 30,000 people have lost their lives due to trespassing and untoward incidents around railway tracks in the last three years.

The Railways keeps a record of all the deaths that occur on its premises under three separate heads— consequential accidents, trespassing and untoward incidents. In the last three years, around 29,000 to 30,000 people have lost their lives due to either trespassing or untoward incidents, Railway Board Chairman V K Yadav told reporters here.

It is true that consequential accidents were indeed zero in 2019-2020 and so far this year as well, he said.

His comments came after the Niti Aayog raised concerns over the national transporter’s claim of zero deaths around railway tracks in the last fiscal.

Niti Aayog Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Amitabh Kant in his letter to the Railways pointed out that over 2,000 people lose their lives in the Mumbai suburban network every year and many of these deaths are caused by people falling overboard or from the platform on to the tracks.

Kant also suggested that these deaths, ideally, should be officially recorded.

In fact, after the 2018 tragedy in Amritsar wherein 59 people were killed and over 100 injured after being run over by two passenger trains while they were watching Dussehra celebrations, the Railways said that it was a case of trespassing.

For the past few years, the Railways has been taking a number of steps to reduce the number of deaths due to accidents, including modernising the signaling system and the elimination of unmanned level crossings over broad gauge network.