‘I am haunted by it’: Survivors of deadly train crash in India recount trauma

KRUTIKA PATHI and RISHI LEKH

Gura Pallay was watching another train pass by the one he was sitting in when he heard sudden, loud screeching. Before he could make sense of what was happening, he was thrown out of the train.

Pallay, 24, landed next to the tracks along with metal wreckage of the train he’d been riding in, and instantly lost consciousness. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the twisted remains of a train on the tracks.

His train had derailed after colliding with a stopped freight train shortly after leaving Balasore, a coastal city about 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of the state capital. Another passenger train, the one he had seen pass by moments earlier, then hit the derailed carriages.

“I saw it with my own eyes, but I still can’t describe what I saw. I am haunted by it,” he said