Signal failure led to India's deadly train crash, officials say

Indian authorities on Sunday completed rescue operations after the country's deadliest rail crash in more than two decades, with signal failure emerging as the likely cause of an accident that killed at least 275 people.

The death toll from Friday night's crash was revised down from 288 after it was found that some bodies had been counted twice, said Pradeep Jena, chief secretary of the eastern state of Odisha.

The tally was unlikely to rise, he told reporters. "Now the rescue operation is complete."

Nearly 1,200 people were injured when a passenger train hit a stationary freight train, jumped the tracks and hit another passenger train passing in the opposite direction near the district of Balasore.

More than 900 people had been discharged from hospital while 260 were still being treated, with one patient in critical condition, the Odisha state government said in an update on Sunday evening.

A preliminary investigation indicated the Coromandel Express, heading to Chennai from Kolkata, moved out of the main track and entered a loop track — a side track used to park trains — at 128 km/h, crashing into the freight train parked on the loop track, said Railway Board member Jaya Varma Sinha.

That crash caused the engine and first four or five coaches of the Coromandel Express to jump the tracks, topple and hit the last two coaches of the Yeshwantpur-Howrah train heading in the opposite direction at 126 km/h on the second main track, she told reporters.

This caused those two coaches to jump the tracks and result in the massive pileup, Sinha said. Trains that carry goods are often parked on an adjacent loop line so the main line is clear for a passing train.

The passenger trains, carrying 2,296 people, were not overspeeding, she said.

The drivers of both those trains were injured but survived, she said.

India's deadliest train crash in more than two decades has renewed questions over the safety of the country's vast railway network. Many are asking why long-promised anti-collision devices, which prevent crashes using automatic brakes, are installed on very few train lines.

Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who was at the site on Sunday, rejected the idea that such a device would have made a difference. He said it was a "change in electronic interlocking" that caused the crash, an error in electronic signals that may have sent one of the high-speed trains onto the wrong track.

The computer-controlled track management system, or "interlocking system," is supposed to direct a train to an empty track at the point where two tracks meet.

Vaishnaw said only a full investigation will reveal how the signal was sent and what exactly went wrong. Sinha said a detailed investigation will reveal whether the error was human or technical.