New Delhi: A man died after being hit by a Vande Bharat Express near Tundla in Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday. The incident occurred while the train was operating from Varanasi to Delhi.
Incidentally, a day after the launch of the train in 2019, it hit a cow when returning from Varanasi. This incident took place at Barhan, 15 km from Tundla in Uttar Pradesh.
The officials maintained that it was a case of "skidding wheels" due to a cattle runover by the train. "It was a case of skidding wheels after the train ran over a cattle. Engineers are looking into it," Northern Railway CPRO Deepak Kumar said, reported India Today.
In a similar incident, last month, a man died after being knocked down by a Vande Bharat train in Kerala's Kozhikode. The train was on its way from Kasargod to Thiruvananthapuram.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday flagged off five Vande Bharat Express trains connecting important cities in different parts of the country, including tourist towns, adding to the growing list of the much sought after semi high-speed trains.
Modi reached Rani Kamalapati railway station in the state capital Bhopal from where he flagged off the five trains – two physically and three in virtual mode — covering half a dozen states with Goa, Bihar and Jharkhand getting their first such service.
This is for the first time so many Vande Bharat trains have been launched in one day.
These semi high-speed trains are: Rani Kamalapati (Bhopal)-Jabalpur Vande Bharat Express, Bhopal-Indore Vande Bharat Express, Madgaon (Goa)-Mumbai Vande Bharat Express, Dharwad-Bengaluru Vande Bharat Express, and Hatia-Patna Vande Bharat Express, as per an official statement.
