The Hindu : Armymen rise to the occasion

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 16, 2003

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Armymen rise to the occasion

By Our Staff Correspondent

CHANDIGARH MAY 15. A still sleepy Paramjit Singh was stunned when two pairs of hands grasped him as he emerged out of the toilet and threw him out of the Amritsar-bound Frontier Mail. As he landed in the fields, he realised that some ``men of the Wahe Guru'' had rescued him from the burning train.

A resident of Amritsar, Paramjit was lucky to be rescued as a group of alert, valiant armymen had put their wits and act together to save as many as they could, after they discovered that at least three coaches had caught fire minutes after the train had left the Ludhiana station this morning.

Claiming to be the first to notice the fire, Manju Sharma from Jalandhar told presspersons that she pulled the chain and raised an alarm. She narrated how she ran from one end of the coach to the other, only to find that piles of luggage had blocked the doors.

Ultimately, she jumped out of the S-4 coach from which badly charred bodies of most victims were recovered later.

Not many were as lucky as Havaldars A.D. Singh and Bhagwan Singh. After having made 10-12 trips in the smoke-filled coaches, they had to give up their rescue missions. They saw people falling unconscious and ultimately being consumed by the flames, even as they stood helpless with the fire raging wild. The luggage was a major hurdle to the rescue operations as it not only blocked the passage but also caught fire quickly.

The jawans, travelling by the train to their fields of posting, swung into action quickly and detached the coupling between the coaches S-5 and S-6. They also manually pushed S-6 to prevent it from catching fire. Presspersons, who reached the spot, said the jawans must have pulled out 200 passengers to safety. Led by Brig. Sunil Dhawan and Col. Ranjit Singh, the Armymen also put up tents and provided preliminary medical assistance.

One of the jawan, Saji from Kerala, lost his wife and two children. Equally tragic was the plight of Anjali from Sholapur. Her husband, an Armyman, his mother, brother and sister-in-law were missing. With an infant, she was planning to leave for Amritsar, as she was told that the railway authorities had sent some passengers there.

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