The Sarai Banjara rail disaster occurred on 2 December 2000, when a derailed freight train crossed onto the opposite track early in the morning in

Punjab, India Punjab (; ) is a States and union territories of India, state in northern India. Forming part of the larger Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, the state is bordered by the States and union territories of India, Indian states of Himachal ...

. A

Howrah–Amritsar Express Howrah–Amritsar Express was an Express train of the Indian Railways connecting in West Bengal and of Punjab. It operated with 13049/13050 train numbers on daily basis. Service The 13005/Howrah–Amritsar Express had average speed of 55&n ...

a passenger train coming from other direction hit the freight train head-on at speed, killing 46 people and injuring at least 150. The accident started when a cracked rail on the line between

Mandi Gobindgarh Mandi Gobindgarh is a town and municipal committee in Fatehgarh Sahib district in the state of Punjab in North India. It is also referred to as Steel City of Punjab or "Loha Mandi" due to its large number of steel factories. History According ...

and

Rajpura Rajpura () is a city in Patiala district in the Indian state of Punjab, India, situated along the border of the Indian state of Haryana. It is located 26 KM Patiala city, towards East from District Head Quarter. It is Tehsil Head Quarter. Rajp ...

Punjab Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising ...

derailed a large freight train at 5.40 am without causing any injuries. The derailed train was covering both sides of the track, and so the driver dismounted to give a warning. As he was walking to the train office in Sarai Banjara railway station, the ''Howrah Mail'' train traveling between

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

and

Amritsar Amritsar (), historically also known as Rāmdāspur and colloquially as ''Ambarsar'', is the second largest city in the Indian state of Punjab, after Ludhiana. It is a major cultural, transportation and economic centre, located in the Majha r ...

crashed into the derailed freight train head-on at high speed. Although the wreckage did not catch fire, the devastation was serious, with jack-knifed carriages, twisted metal, and the sheer number of injured people hampering the immediate rescue efforts. Ambulances arrived to take the injured to hospital, whilst local people, working alongside railway officials and emergency services tried to free the survivors trapped in the wreckage. The final death toll was given as 46 killed and over 150 injured in the crash, although there have been some claims that over 50 people were killed. As is the custom in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, the rail authorities promised by way of compensation: 15,000 rupees to the families of the dead, 5,000 rupees to those seriously injured, and 500 to those with minor injuries. Some politicians involved in the investigation initially believed that sabotage may have caused the goods train to derail, but a subsequent investigation concluded that the accident was entirely the result of poor track maintenance, combined with an inefficient warning system in case of emergency. The sabotage claim has been suggested by some as a ruse to disguise the dilapidated state of India's rail network. Following the crash, the ''

Hindustan Times ''Hindustan Times'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper based in Delhi. It is the flagship publication of HT Media, an entity controlled by the KK Birla family, and is owned by Shobhana Bhartia. It was founded by Sunder Singh Lyall ...

'' ran an editorial, which commented: ''"Indian Railways possibly runs the most unsafe service in the world. If the trains aren't killing people in collisions, then they are running over people at manned and unmanned crossings ... the body count is too high for anyone to feel safe in a train."'' The site of the crash was not far from that of the

Khanna rail disaster The Khanna rail disaster occurred on 26 November 1998 near Khanna on the Khanna-Ludhiana section of India's Northern Railway in Punjab, at 03:15 when the Calcutta-bound Jammu Tawi-Sealdah Express collided with six derailed coaches of the Amri ...

of 1998, in which 211 people were killed.

External links

Tribune News ReportsWorld Socialist Report on track safety
{{2000 railway accidents Derailments in India Railway accidents in 2000 2000 disasters in India 2000s in Punjab, India Rail transport in Punjab, India December 2000 events in India