The incident of derailment site of 15633 Bikaner – Guwahati Express witnessed many admirable deeds. The N. F. Railway acted fast in the first hour, the most crucial hour of an accident.
This led to saving many important lives. Empathizing with the passengers and realising their immediate need for finances, Railways has paid ex-gratia payment at the shortest possible time, within hours of the accident, to all the injured passengers.
Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Railways, Communications, Electronics and Information Technology, himself reached the accident site to have an on the spot assessment.
He also visited hospitals and interacted with the admitted passengers and assured best possible health care facilities to all admitted passengers. One of the injured passengers, Kuldeep Rawat, upon interaction with the minister at the Jalpaiguri Super Specialty Hospital, mentioned that his luggage was lost during the accident. Vaishnaw immediately activated the Railway machinery and his luggage was soon found and handed over to his caretaker and relative Arun Kumar.
In another case, the minister, while visiting the injured at hospitals, met Safikul Ali from Dhula in Assam who did not have a mobile phone to communicate with his family. The minister took help from his other ministry and sent a postman to his native village. After failure to locate any family member by the postman, an announcement was made through the mosque, usually used for namaaz. Through this announcement, his family members were informed about the accident.
Besides, the ART (Accident Relief Train) & ARME (Accident Relief Medical Equipment Van) staff of N. F. Railway also did exemplary work during the rescue operation which led to saving many lives. On receipt of the information, senior railway officials, along with ART, rushed towards the site from New Jalpaiguri and New Alipurduar and jumped into the rescue operation. Injured passengers were brought to the nearest hospitals and timely medical attention was paid to them.
Thereafter, stranded passengers were sent to their destination stations by a special train. All stranded passengers were provided with tea, drinking water, biscuits, snacks, dinner packets, etc.
Following the accident, restoration work was done on war footing for normalization of train movement under the supervision of Anshul Gupta, General Manager of N. F. Railway. The entire railway fraternity worked 24×7 that resulted in timely restoration of the train movement through the accident affected section at the shortest possible time.
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