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NEW DELHI, India -- A passenger train in northern India crashed into another train's rear carriage reserved for women and disabled passengers, killing 22 people and injuring 16 who remained trapped for hours Oct. 21 near Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal, police said.
Rescuers had to cut open the wrecked compartment to free trapped passengers following the crash outside Agra, about 130 miles (210 kilometres) south-east of New Delhi, said Rajesh Bajpai, a railway spokesman.
Rescuers recovered 19 bodies during an operation that lasted nearly seven hours, said Rajesh Dikshit, a police spokesman. Three of the 19 injured people died at a hospital, police said.
No foreigners were among the victims, Dixit said.
The smashed coach was reserved for women and physically handicapped people, although some other people may have been among the victims, district Magistrate Suresh Chandra Sharma said.
The two trains were heading to New Delhi from southern India. The Mewar Express was stopped at a red signal when the other train rammed it from behind, Sharma, the district magistrate, told The Associated Press.
"We felt a massive jolt," said Ramesh Charan, a passenger aboard the Mewar Express. "Some people sleeping on upper berths fell to the coach floor by the impact of the collision."
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From The AP:
