India train crash investigation starts

STORY: India opened an official investigation on Monday (June 5) into its deadliest rail crash in more than two decades.

Initial findings suggest signal failure caused the collision that killed at least 275 people and wounded around 1,200 in the eastern state of Odisha.

Scores of bodies have yet to be identified and desperate relatives were still scouring hospitals and mortuaries.

Disaster struck on Friday (June 2) when the Coromandel Express passenger train hit a stationary freight train, jumped the tracks and hit another passenger train traveling in the opposite direction.

Trains have resumed running on a repaired section of the line, crawling past mangled compartments and workers by the track side.

About 75 miles away, in Kharagpur in West Bengal state, railway officials and witnesses gathered to submit evidence to a two-day inquiry led by the rail safety commissioner.

The computer-controlled track management system is suspected to have malfunctioned when it allowed the Coromandel Express to move on to a loop track where trains were parked.

It hit the stationary freight train at 80 miles per hour.

That crash caused the engine and first four or five coaches of the moving passenger train to jump the tracks, topple and hit the last two coaches of a train heading in the opposite direction at a similar speed.