The accident happened due to a 'change that occurred during electronic interlocking' - a technical term referring to a complex signal system designed to stop trains from colliding by arranging their movement on the tracks.
BALASORE - The cause of India's deadliest train disaster in decades was linked to the signal system, the railway minister said Sunday, as families scoured hospitals and morgues for missing relatives with deaths expected to top 288.
It slammed into a freight train and the wreckage derailed an express running north from India's tech hub Bengaluru to Kolkata that was also passing the site. The rescue effort was declared over on Saturday evening after emergency personnel had combed the mangled wreckage for survivors and laid scores of bodies out under white sheets beside the tracks.
In sweltering heat, many of the bodies were being transferred to bigger centres and officials suggested some would only be identified by DNA testing. Beside him waited his friend Mahender Yadav, 60, whose two sons travelling with Kumar were recovering in hospital. India has one of the world's largest rail networks and has seen several disasters over the years, the worst of them in 1981 when a train derailed while crossing a bridge in Bihar and plunged into the river below, killing between 800 and 1,000 people.
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