Only 5% of railway accident victims' families given compensation in 10 yrs

MUMBAI: Families of only 1,408 of the 26,547 people who died while travelling on Mumbai's suburban railway network in the past 10 years — or just around 5%— have been compensated.

- Megha Sood

This was revealed in a Right to Information (RTI) query from Indian Railways by activist God-frey Pimenta recently.

More than 7 million passengers travel by local trains — considered Mumbai's lifeline —every day. The deaths are caused by overcrowding — as was the case on June 9 when two overcrowded trains passed one another near Mumbra station, leading to five people falling off and losing their lives ~ or by passengers getting trapped in the gap between the platform and the train. Crossing tracks irresponsibly or stampede, such as the one on September 29, 2017, at the Elphinstone Road Railway Station, where 22 people were killed, are other occurrences that lead to deaths.

On an average, at least eight people die in such incidents on all three railway lines in Mumbai every day, which is not surprising as a single coach is packed with 1,800 passengers —two to three times over its actual capacity.