Bahanaga train tragedy: Orissa High Court grants conditional bail to 3 accused

The Orissa High Court on Tuesday granted bail to the three accused arrested in the tragic Bahanaga train tragedy that killed about 300 passengers in Balasore, leaving more than 1,200 injured. The top court granted a conditional bail to the three men, arrested by the CBI for their alleged negligence that led to the tragic train mishap.

The CBI had arrested Mohammad Amir Khan, Arun Kumar Mahanta and Pappu Yadav of the Signal and Telecommunications (S&T) department on July 7, 2023, for allegedly causing the death of passengers and destroying evidence.

While Mahanta and Yadav were posted as senior section engineer (in-charge) and technician, respectively in Balasore, Khan worked as a senior section engineer at Soro near Balasore.

A single-judge bench of Justice Aditya Kumar Mohapatra ordered their release on bail. They are required to furnish a bail bond of Rs 50,000 each, along with two local solvent sureties of the same amount.

The court also imposed six additional conditions, stating that the rail authorities would not post or assign them to their headquarters in the same division where the tragic train mishap occurred.

Worth mentioning, the collision involving the Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express, Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express and a goods train near the Bahanaga Bazar station killed around 300 people, leaving another 1200 injured on June 2, 2023.

A high-level inquiry by Railway department had found ‘wrong signalling’ and ‘lapses at multiple levels’ in the S&T department to be the main reason of the tragic accident and indicated that the tragedy could have been easily averted if the red flags were reported early.