21-year-old Balram was at the Central station on Sunday night, waiting eagerly for his train to Guwahati at 11. 40 p.m. He had come on Thursday too, but the whole jostling and fight to get inside had unnerved him. “I had a fracture only last week. That day, I thought I will lose my arm,” he says.Many of those who rushed to the Central station in the last three days, hoping to get into one of the four trains going to Guwahati, had it difficult with the medical centre at the station recording at least 38 cases of injury. Many of these were due to laceration, incision, bleeding and suffocation. The special medical booth was set up by the directorate of health and southern Railways to heed to the requirements of these migrants on Saturday. “Many smaller injuries have also been reported. But, since everybody was in such a hurry, we...
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had to make sure everyone was sent in a queue,” said an RPF official.Balram however feels the situation would have been much better had the stall come up on Thursday itself. “There were 3,000 people travelling in the coaches meant for only a 1,000. There was a lot of panic. Some people hurt their fingers in the shutters due to the congestion, some travelled on the footboard and also got injured” he says. One of the labourers Nazarath (20) was taken to the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital after he fainted due to suffocation. “The cases of fracture were sent to the railway hospital in Perambur,” said V. Shanmugan, core officer, St. John Ambulance Brigade. “We had to tell some people not to leave then, and take the next train,” he added.