Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday questioned the death toll in Odisha train accident saying 61 were dead and 182 were missing from Bengal itself. She also said her government was fully supporting the Odisha government in the aftermath of the triple train accident that claimed the lives of 275 passengers and left over a thousand people injured. The Bengal CM termed the incident as “very unfortunate” and said that she sent help to the Naveen Patnaik’s Odisha government on the day the incident happened. 


Three trains — Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express, SMVT Bengaluru–Howrah SF Express, and a freight train — piled up after Coromandel Express derailed near Bahanaga railway station in Odisha’s Balasore district on Friday night.


Briefing the media on Sunday, Banerjee said that her government sent 150 ambulances, 50 doctors, nurses, buses and disaster management teams to the site on Friday, when the accident took place. 






206 people are being treated in the state. 73 people from the state are admitted to various hospitals in Odisha. While 56 people from West Bengal have been discharged from the hospitals in Odisha. 182 people are yet to be identified, she added, reported news agency ANI. 


The former Union railway minister had visited the site and met with injured people in Balasore a day after on Saturday and called the accident “biggest of the century” and said that a proper investigation was needed to unravel the truth.


She also spoke to Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and other senior officials who were already present there and claimed most of the passengers "were from Bengal barring a few from Kerala, Bengaluru and Odisha".


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"Coromandel Express is one of the best trains in the country. This is the biggest railway accident of the century. In 1985, there was a massive train accident in Bihar. When I was the Railways minister, the Maoists had 'organised' an accident, the probe of which was given to the CID. Unfortunately, there is no outcome even today," she said.


She has announced Rs 5 lakh compensation to families of West Bengal passengers killed in the accident, Rs 1 lakh to critically injured and Rs 50,000 to those with minor injuries.