Three railway officials were arrested on Friday following one of India's deadliest train accidents last month, which claimed the lives of more than 290 people, the country's federal crime agency announced on Friday.
The Central Bureau of Investigation confirmed the detained men, identified as two signal engineers and one technician, have been charged with culpable homicide without murder and destruction of evidence.
The June crash in Odisha, one of India's eastern states, occurred when a packed passenger train was mistakenly diverted on to an adjacent line, where it struck a stationary freight train carrying iron ore.
The collision sent the passenger train's coaches off track and on to another line, where they collided with another train moving in the opposite direction.
On board the two passenger trains were more than 2,290 people and close to 1,000 were injured.
Following the accident, Ashwini Vaishnaw, India’s Railway Minister, linked the cause of the crash to the signalling system.
India, home to 1.42 billion people, is known for one of the world's most complex railway systems, with over 64,000 kilometres of tracks, 14,000 passenger trains and 8,000 stations.
The railways extend from the Himalayas in the north to the beaches in the south.
However, this extensive network has been weakened by years of mismanagement and neglect.
Despite safety improvement efforts, hundreds of accidents still occur annually, with the majority blamed on human error or obsolete signalling equipment.
The accident in June was the deadliest since 1995, when a collision near New Delhi resulted in 358 fatalities.
Another fatal incident occurred in 2016 when a passenger train derailed between the cities of Indore and Patna, killing 146.
The CBI initiated a criminal negligence investigation following the recent crash.
According to Reuters, workers who were repairing a rail-road barrier had made incorrect connections in the automated signalling system on the network.
A report seen by Reuters revealed that Commission of Railway Safety investigators attributed the first collision to modifications made to the signalling circuit in an attempt to fix frequent issues at the nearby rail-road barrier.
Indian Railways, a state monopoly operated by the Railway Board which reports to the Railways Ministry, is the fourth-largest train network globally.
The rail network is presently undergoing a $30 billion transformation that will include new trains and modern stations, part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's drive to improve infrastructure and connectivity.
