BAHANAGA – At a makeshift morgue in an Indian school, a couple scanned photos of disfigured corpses before leaning in for a closer look at one they think is their 22-year-old son.

A pendant around his injured neck provided the terrible confirmation.

The mother held back tears and leant gently on her husband’s shoulder for a few seconds, before looking away from the laptop of an official trying to identify the dead after India’s worst train disaster in decades.

People have come to the Bahanaga High School, less than a kilometre from the crash site near Balasore, in the eastern state of Odisha, since Friday’s horrific three-train collision.

“The dead bodies that came here were already in a very bad state,” said Mr Arvind Agarwal, the official in charge of the makeshift morgue. The searing heat has “further disfigured” many of them, he added.

“The biggest challenge is the identification,” Mr Agarwal said, sitting in the school headmaster’s office.

Volunteer Siddharth Jena, 23, sat next to him with a laptop that has numbered pictures of every body recovered and sent to the school since Friday night.

At least 275 people were killed and nearly 1,200 injured in the tragedy. The death toll was revised down from 288 after it was found that some bodies had been counted twice, said Odisha chief secretary Pradeep Jena.

More than 900 people had been discharged from hospital while 260 were still being treated, with one patient in critical condition, the Odisha state government said in an update on Sunday evening.

Indian Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Sunday pointed to an electronic signal system as being the cause of the tragedy. He gave no further details.

“We have identified the cause of the accident and the people responsible for it,” Mr Vaishnaw told news agency ANI, but said it was “not appropriate” to give details before a final investigation report.

“Whoever did it, and how it happened, will be found out after proper investigation,” he added.

Railway Board member Jaya Varma Sinha said a preliminary inquiry indicated that the Coromandel Express, heading to Chennai from Kolkata, moved out of the main track and entered a loop track – a side track used to park trains – at 128 kmh, crashing into the freight train parked on the loop track. 

That crash caused the engine and first four or five coaches of the Coromandel Express to jump the tracks, topple and hit the last two coaches of the Yeshwantpur-Howrah train heading the other way at 126 kmh on the second main track, she told reporters. 

This caused those two coaches to jump the tracks and result in the massive wreckage, added Ms Sinha. The drivers of both passenger trains were injured but survived.

The probe is now focused on the computer-controlled track management system, called the “interlocking system”, which directs a train to an empty track at the point where two tracks meet. 

It is suspected that the system malfunctioned and should not have let the Coromandel Express take the loop track, Ms Sinha said.

Corridors lined with corpses

The Indian authorities on Sunday completed rescue operations at the crash site. But the work to identify the victims has only begun.

Once a family has identified their relative from photos, they are given a receipt that allows them to view the body. But it has been far from simple.

“We received 179 bodies here, but only 45 of them could be identified,” said Mr Ranajit Nayak, the police officer in charge of releasing the bodies. “There were bodies with only a torso, an entirely burnt face, disfigured skull and no other visible identity markers left.”

Bodies in white bags tagged “identified” or “unidentified” lined both sides of the blood-stained corridor late on Saturday, with others stored in classrooms.

“Did you expect that this identification would be easy for anyone?“

Work began late on Saturday to move unidentified bodies to a centre with better facilities to preserve the bodies for relatives travelling longer distances.

Unidentified corpses will then be moved to permanent city morgues.

For some, like Mr Abhijit Chakrabarty, 27, from neighbouring West Bengal state, the wait was over.

He saw a photograph with a bracelet worn by his missing 25-year-old brother-in-law Subhashish.

But others continued their desperate search.

Mr Agarwal, the official at the school, warned that some families might have to take DNA tests to provide matches.

Mr Noor Jamal Mondon, 38, from Bardhaman district in West Bengal, has heard nothing from his missing brother Yaad Ali, 35.

“We’ve checked all the hospitals and the crash site throughout the day,” said Mr Mondon, an imam at a mosque.

“We are now looking at the dead bodies at the morgue once again.”

Condolences have poured in from around the world.

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has written to Mr Modi to express his condolences following the accident.

Mr Lee extended his heartfelt condolences both to him and to the families affected by the disaster, on behalf of the Singapore Government.

Pope Francis said he was “deeply saddened” by the “immense loss of life” and offered prayers for the “many injured”, while United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres extended “his deep condolences to the families of the victims”.

India has one of the world’s largest rail networks and has seen several disasters over the years, the worst of them in 1981 when a train derailed while crossing a bridge in Bihar and plunged into the river below, killing between 800 and 1,000 people.

Friday’s crash ranks as its third worst, and the deadliest since 1995, when two express trains collided in Firozabad, near Agra, killing more than 300 people.

The disaster comes despite new investments and upgrades in technology that have significantly improved railway safety in recent years. AFP, REUTERS