Guwahati: Passengers aboard the Kolkata-Sairang Express recalled terrifying moments after the train suddenly lurched, throwing people off their seats and berths before crashing into a safety dead-end of a loop line, smashing electric poles and eventually derailing.The impact was so severe that survivors compared the experience to an earthquake.For Akshay Chakraborty, a resident of Hojai in central Assam, the journey home from Chennai turned into a near-death experience. Akshay, who works at a car-parts manufacturing company in Chennai, had travelled to Kolkata before boarding the train for Hojai.“It felt as if I had returned from the jaws of death. I was sitting on my seat when the train suddenly jerked violently. My friend had gone to brush his teeth and was standing near the door. The train had been running normally until that moment. Suddenly, everything started shaking as if a massive earthquake had struck. Passengers from the upper berths came crashing down on me, while the impact threw my friend out of the train,” Akshay told TOI.Akshay suffered injuries in the accident. After being discharged from hospital, he abandoned his train journey and took a bus home, reaching there in the afternoon. His friend suffered a leg injury and was scheduled to undergo further treatment on Thursday.Passengers said the train came to a halt nearly 500 metres from the station after smashing through the dead-end track. Some recalled seeing it run over stones beside the tracks as it veered off course. They said several families were living barely 30 feet from the spot where the train stopped, raising fears that the accident could have resulted in a far greater tragedy.Akshay said the train was travelling at an estimated speed of 60-70 kmph when it went out of control and struck electric poles one after another after breaking through the dead-end.“Eventually, the train tilted to one side and came crashing down on open ground near a residential area. We were terrified,” he said.Rambuatsaiha, a Mizoram resident travelling from Guwahati to Sairang, was seated beside a window when the accident occurred. He had boarded the train barely an hour earlier and was beginning to doze off when the impact jolted him awake.“I was looking out of the window and had just started feeling sleepy. I had boarded the train only about an hour earlier. Suddenly, there was a massive jolt, and everything changed in an instant. The train had been running so smoothly that none of us could have imagined something like this happening,” he said.Panic gripped the passengers for the next 15-20 minutes as people screamed and checked whether anyone had been killed or seriously injured. Several passengers rushed towards the locomotive to enquire about the loco pilot and and understand the cause of the accident.
