House painter, 21, who was about to get married next month among Indian train crash dead

A 21-year-old man who painted houses for a living and was about to get married next month is among the hundreds of people killed in one of India’s deadliest train collisions in two decades.

A group of six-seven men in their early 20s were on their way to Chennai in the south of the country from Medinipur district in the eastern state of West Bengal on board the Coromandal express when the accident took place on Friday night.

Rajib Dakua, 21, who painted houses in Chennai, was among them. People from his village arrived in Odisha on Saturday and this morning were able to identify Dakua’s decomposing corpse.

Families gathered in the state capital of Bhubaneshwar on Sunday to indentify at least 100 bodies brought in by 50 ambulances from areas close to the crash site.

Federal health minister Mansukh Mandaviya arrived at the All India Institute Of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Bhubaneswar on Sunday but did not issue a statement to reporters.

Rescuers and families searched through mangled train carriages for more victims from the crash with signal failure emerging as the likely cause.

At least 288 people were killed on Friday when a passenger train went off the tracks and hit another one near the district of Balasore in Odisha.

Five more bodies were brought to a school being used as a mortuary near the scene of the accident early on Sunday.

“We do not know how many more bodies will come,” a health worker said. Eyewitnesses recalled “horrific and heart-wrenching” scenes after two passenger locomotives derailed.

Indian Railways says it transports more than 13 million people every day. But the state-run monopoly has had a patchy safety record because of ageing infrastructure.

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Prime minister Narendra Modi, who faces an election due next year, visited the scene on Saturday to talk to rescue workers, inspect the wreckage, and meet some of the nearly 1,200 injured.

The South Eastern Railway said a preliminary report indicated that the accident was the result of signal failure. Workers with heavy machinery were clearing the damaged track, wrecked trains and electric cables, as distraught relatives looked on.

“We were called by the police and asked to come,” said Baisakhi Dhar from West Bengal state, searching for her husband Nikhil Dhar.

She said her husband’s luggage and mobile had been found but had no information on his whereabouts.

More than 1,000 people are involved in the rescue, the Railway Ministry said on Twitter.

“The target is by Wednesday morning the entire restoration work is complete and tracks should be working,” said railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.

At a business centre where bodies are taken for identification, dozens of relatives waited, many weeping and clutching identification cards and pictures of missing loved-ones.

US president Joe Biden, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, British prime minister Rishi Sunak and French president Emmanuel Macron have expressed condolences.

(Additional reporting from the wires)