Indian authorities said preliminary findings showed a signal failure caused a train accident that killed nearly 300 people on Friday, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed to punish those responsible.India’s railway minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said on Sunday that the government had “identified the cause of the incident and the people responsible for it”. Early findings suggested a failure in the “electronic interlocking” system, which controls the movement of trains, resulted in the three-way collision around Balasore station in the eastern state of Odisha.
One fast-moving passenger train, the southbound Coromandel Express, received an errant signal and moved on to a back-up track where it crashed into a stationary goods train, according to the government report. A third passenger train heading north then hit the derailed carriages.
The crash killed at least 288 people and injured more than 800, making it India’s worst railway accident in more than two decades.