LAHORE, July 14: The Sukkur control office and the Sarhad railway station staff is responsible for three trains’ collision, according to a preliminary report. Sources told Dawn on Thursday that the railways vigilance cell at Ghotki submitted its preliminary report to the high-ups of the organization which would be presented to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Saturday. “The brakes of Quetta Express locomotives had failed and the train was standing on main line but both the Sukkur control office and Ghotki station staff gave a green signal to Karachi Express,” sources said while quoting the report which landed at the PR headquarters late on Thursday night.
“The report has rebutted the claims of Minister Shamim Haider and Chairman Shakeel Durrani that the Karachi Express driver ignored the signal or he was sleeping,” they said and added: “It has also become evident that the five officers suspended from service by the minister were made a scapegoat.”
“The then general manager Zafarullah Qureshi and chief operating superintendent Iqbal Ahmad Khan were among the seven senior officers suspended from service when 54 people were killed in Tezgam’s collision with a goods train near Ghotki in June 1991,” they said and added the trains crash was not because of the error of the driver.
“The Sarhad accident was the first one involving three passenger trains but the minister and the chairman spared their immediate subordinates for reasons best known to themselves.
“All the survivors have said that the Karachi Express driver did apply brakes. The inter-lock moderate system installed at the section has the provision that an over-shoot train in case the signal is red would automatically go to the snack dead or sand hump track.
“The train might have gone to the snack dead track if the driver was not awake and the signal was red. It could only go straight in case the signal was green.”
