ON BOARD THE FRIENDSHIP EXPRESS (India-Bangladesh), April 14: Huge crowds of cheering people lined the railway tracks on the border between India and Bangladesh on Monday as passenger train services between Kolkata and Dhaka resumed after a gap of more than 40 years.

The service was suspended after a 1965 war between India and Pakistan, when Bangladesh was a part of Pakistan, and the reopening caps years of negotiations on restoring links between the two parts of Bengal.

A train carrying 65 passengers rolled from India into Bangladeshi territory through the Darshana border post, about 320 kilometres (198 miles) west of Dhaka, at about 12:25 pm (0625 GMT), an AFP reporter said.

At least 10,000 people braved hot and humid weather to “welcome the passengers with flower petals and bouquets as they arrived,” Bangladesh Railways chief commercial manager Abdul Haq said.

Passengers said they were overwhelmed by the event, which coincides with the first day of the Bengali New Year.

“I had a bout of nostalgia since I boarded the train this morning. It is the same track that I and my father used to travel on. The same old villages are here,” said Nihar Ranjan Saha, who was travelling to his ancestral village.

“I am spellbound seeing thousands of people coming to greet us. We almost forgot that we’re the same people living across the border,” Saha said.

Residents of both the Indian state of West Bengal and Bangladesh speak Bengali and have close cultural links.

While passenger services have been suspended since 1965, cargo links continued, and in the 1990s a passenger bus service was launched between Dhaka and Kolkata.

Another Maitree (Friendship) Express covered with flowers was also travelling in the opposite direction from Dhaka.

“It’s a historic occasion for both the countries. We will be closer after the resumption of the India-Bangladesh passenger train service,” said Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury.

In India, his counterpart Pranab Mukherjee hailed “a historic moment for India and Bangladesh.” The trains are scheduled to roll into the destinations later Monday.

One of the passengers on the India-bound train, K. S. Zaman, who was visiting relatives in Hawrah near Kolkata where he was born 78 years ago, had made the journey before the service was cut off 43 years ago.—AFP