BHUBANESWAR, India (AP) -- Families of the victims of India's deadliest train crash in decades filled a hospital in Bhubaneswar city on Monday to try to identify the bodies of relatives, as railway officials recommended a criminal probe of the crash that killed 275 people.
Distraught relatives of passengers killed in the crash Friday lined up outside the eastern city's All India Institute of Medical Sciences. Meanwhile, survivors being treated in hospitals said they are still trying to make sense of the horrific disaster.
Outside the hospital, two large screens cycled through photos of the bodies, the faces so bloodied and charred that they were hardly recognizable.
Each body had a number assigned to it, and relatives stood near the screen and watched as the photos changed, looking for details like clothing for clues.
Many of the people said they spent days on desperate journeys from neighboring states, traveling on multiple trains, buses or rented cars to identify and claim bodies, a process that stretched into a third day.
So far only 45 bodies have been identified, and 33 have been handed over to relatives, said Mayur Sooryavanshi, an administrator who was overseeing the identification process at the hospital in the capital of Odisha state, about 125 miles south of the site of the train crash in Balasore.
"It's the first time I have dealt with something like this," said Dr. Utkal Keshari Suna, a senior resident at the Bhubaneshwar hospital. "It's been a very difficult experience. I am in forensics, so I am used to dealing with dead bodies, but nothing like this," he said, standing inside the mortuary, where the air was thick with the smell of the dead.
"It's horrific. Time has also passed, so many bodies have started decomposing, so it's becoming more and more difficult to identify them," he said.
Upendra Ram began searching for his son, Retul Ram, on Sunday after traveling about 520 miles from neighboring Bihar state. The day-long journey in a rented car, which cost him $423, was exhausting for Ram. Retul, 17, had been on his way to Chennai to find work, Ram said.
After spending hours looking at photographs of the dead, Ram identified his son around noon Monday.
"I just want to take the dead body and go back home. He was a very good son," said Ram, adding that Retul had dropped out of school to earn money for the family.
"My wife and daughter can't stop crying at home. They are asking me to bring the body back quickly," he said, wiping tears from his eyes with a red scarf he had tied around his head.
Friday's crash was one of the worst rail disasters in India's history. Investigators said a signaling failure might have been the cause of the disaster, in which a passenger train hit a freight train, derailing on the tracks before being hit by another passenger train coming in the opposite direction on a parallel track.
The collision involved two passenger trains, the Coromandel Express traveling from Howrah in West Bengal state to Chennai in Tamil Nadu state, and the Yesvantpur-Howrah Superfast Express traveling from Bengaluru in Karnataka to Howrah, officials said.
At least 123 trains scheduled to pass through Odisha were either canceled or delayed after the accident. The disruption led air fares to Odisha to spike, prompting India's civil aviation ministry to warn airlines over pricing surges.
A passenger train passes by the site where two passenger trains derailed Friday in Balasore district, in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, Monday, June 5, 2023. The derailment in eastern India that killed over 200 people and injured hundreds was caused by an error in the electronic signaling system that led a train to wrongly change tracks and crash into a freight train, officials said Sunday. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
People wait to receive bodies of those who died in Friday's train accident in Balasore, at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences hospital in Bhubaneswar in the eastern state of Orissa, India, Monday, June 5, 2023. Families of the victims of Indias deadliest train crash in decades filled the hospital on Monday to identify and collect bodies of relatives, as railway officials recommended the countrys premier criminal investigating agency to probe the crash that killed 275 people. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
Jenima Mondal, center, whose son Mamjur Ali Mondal died in Friday's train accident is helped by a health worker after she identified the body at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences hospital in Bhubaneswar in the eastern state of Orissa, India, Monday, June 5, 2023. Families of the victims of India's deadliest train crash in decades filled the hospital on Monday to identify and collect bodies of relatives, as railway officials recommended the country's premier criminal investigating agency to probe the crash that killed 275 people. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)