MAOIST REBELS sabotaged a high-speed passenger train in India’s eastern Bengal state yesterday, killing at least 80 people as it derailed and smashed into an oncoming goods train.
Nearly 10 hours after the accident, near the small town of Sardiha, 135km south of the state capital Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), in which more than 200 people were injured, railway workers, police and paramilitary personnel used blowtorches and cables to try and reach passengers in the wreckage.
Television footage showed the blue passenger wagons and the dark maroon cargo train entangled in a mass of twisted metal along a stretch of track in a region dominated by Maoists.
Officials told television news channels that the death toll could rise as rescue teams toiled to salvage people trapped in the debris. Military helicopters were also deployed. “The cries of women and children from inside the compartments have died down,” said Amitava Rath, a local journalist.
“They [rail staff] are still struggling to cut through metal and bring out those trapped inside.”
Bengal state police chief Bhupinder Singh said: “This has been done by the Maoists,” adding that the rebels waging war against the state on behalf of the poor, dispossessed and millions of marginalised tribal people since 1967, had claimed responsibility.
According to federal interior minister P Chidambaram: “It appears to be a case of sabotage where a portion of the railway track was removed. Whether explosives were used is not yet clear.”
The passenger train was travelling westwards from Kolkata to the Mumbai suburb of Kurla when 13 of its carriages were derailed. Minutes later, a cargo train going in the opposite direction slammed into the derailed carriages, railway minister Mamata Banerjee said.
She too held the Maoists responsible for the sabotage in which two feet of track were uprooted.
The rebels, described by prime minister Manmohan Singh as independent India’s gravest internal security challenge, were observing a “black week” until next Wednesday, including in Bengal where they wield considerable influence in several areas, collecting revenue and dispensing justice through kangaroo courts.
The Maoists, present in 250 of India’s 620 administrative districts in central and eastern provinces, have increased their strikes on government targets over the past few months in response to the massive offensive launched against them late last year.
Over the past five years, more than 4,000 people have died in Maoist-related incidents in the “Red Corridor” stretching across 20 of India’s 29 provinces. Since April, 76 state paramilitaries and 30 policemen were killed by Maoists in central Chattisgarh in an ambush and explosions.
The Maoist insurgency has threatened multinationals and large Indian companies, accusing them of colluding with the government to oppress the poor through mineral and resource exploitation.