More than 30 people were killed in southern India yesterday when the train coach they were travelling in caught fire. The incident took place near the Nellore train station in Andhra Pradesh, on a New Delhi to Chennai train known as the Tamil Nadu Express.
Only one car, a sleeper coach with 72 passengers, was affected and the fire did not spread, railroad officials said.
Twenty-five injured people have been admitted to Nellore hospitals and 32 are dead, said K Sambasiva Rao, a spokesman for South Central Railway. The dead included 19 men, six women and three children. The rest of the bodies are too badly burnt to tell their gender. “We have ordered a high-level investigation,” he said.
The fire started at 4.15am, railroad officials said, and was put out by 5.20am, after it was noticed by a station manager in Nellore. A Nellore official told NDTV the fire may have been started by a short circuit. Passengers could not escape after the doors jammed, eyewitnesses told reporters. Indian trains rarely have smoke alarms or fire detection systems. – (New York Times service)