Inquiry pending into crushed Indian train carriage as toll reaches 34

INDIA: India's railway safety chief was set to begin an inquiry into the partial collapse of a 140-year-old bridge on top of an inter-city passenger train in eastern India that killed 34 people, officials said.

"Commissioner of Railway Safety R.P. Agarwal has reached the site of the accident," Soumitra K. Majumdar, chief spokesman for Eastern Railway, told AFP in Kolkata, the state-run company's headquarters.

"He will stay there for the next two days to conduct the inquiry." Portions of the old bridge in the town of Bhagalpur, in the eastern state of Bihar, had fallen on the railway tracks just two days before Saturday's accident, which injured 17 people, the Press Trust of India agency said.

India's railway minister, who was greeted by an angry crowd waving black flags on a visit Sunday to a hospital where the injured were being treated, called the accident a "blemish" on the reputation of India's state-run rail service.

"The railways have been defamed because of negligence on the part of its officials. I am not going to spare anybody found responsible for the mishap," Lalu Prasad Yadav said.

Two engineers overseeing the dismantling of the now-collapsed bridge were suspended Sunday.

Preparations for the inquiry began as the death toll from the accident rose to 34 Sunday, another spokesman of the rail company said.

NEW DELHI, Monday, AFP