At least 288 people were killed and hundreds injured in the three-train crash in the eastern state of Odisha.
It jolted India.
News crews rushed to the accident spot in Balasore to find mangled train coaches rammed on top of each other. At least 80 bodies remain unclaimed.
But this is not the first such tragedy. India has seen many deadly train accidents before. The country’s rail network is huge, spanning more than 100,000km, but it is also old and overburdened. It carries more than 25 million passengers every day, and there is even more demand it cannot meet.
This week on Beyond the Headlines, host Suhail Akram considers what may have led to the Odisha train crash, why train derailments are such a huge problem in India, and asks what operator Indian Railways could do to improve safety for its millions of daily commuters.
