India’s Recent Railway Disasters With High Fatality Rate

The train disaster in India is a stark reminder of the country’s long history of train accidents, with the tragic loss of at least 275 lives, and hundreds more injured.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau’s statistics, there were over 16,000 railway-related fatalities in the country in the year 2021 alone, including instances of people getting hit while walking on tracks or falling from moving trains.

Below are some of the most catastrophic railway disasters that have taken place in India, claiming many lives.

• In 1981, a passenger train was crossing a bridge in the state of Bihar when it derailed, causing its cars to sink into the Bagmati River. It is believed that about 750 passengers died, and many bodies were never retrieved.

• About 285 people lost their lives in 1999 when two trains crashed head-on in West Bengal.

• In the year 2005, a packed passenger train collided with a stationary cargo train in the western state of Gujarat, leaving at least two dozen people dead.

• A mail train derailment in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, just east of New Delhi, claimed several lives in 2011.

• More than 100 passengers lost their lives in another Uttar Pradesh derailment in 2016.

• During a Hindu festival involving fireworks in the northwestern state of Punjab, a speeding train mowed down dozens of people in 2018.