Eighteen years have gone by since the Bhopal
Gas tragedy. The victims of the biggest
industrial accident are yet to receive succour. “The Bhopal Gas Tragedy “ has been lost in the collective
consciousness of the nation. Yes, life has to go on - we must light candles and
offer prayers for the victims of September, 11 2001 - but do spare a thought
for those who lost their lives in their devotion to duty.
I am
talking of the “unhonoured,” “unwept” and “unsung” railwaymen who stood like “boys
on the burning deck” and kept the wheels of Indian Railways turning.
Third
of December 1984 dawned like any other day at Bhusaval Junction the heart of
Central Railway operations. It was a
pleasant bracing winter morning and it was
“…business as usual….” The
00-00 hours to 08-00 hours shift in the
Control Office was busy tying up the loose ends of the previous day’s
operations and gathering information to plan the day’s work. The telephone lines were buzzing from
different directions and all the ‘control boards’ were busy like the proverbial
beehives. North bound trains towards
Itarsi Junction, South bound trains towards Mumbai, West bound trains towards
Surat and East bound trains towards Nagpur marked their progress on the control
charts.
But wait! the Itarsi line was fading. Those were the days when railway
communication was mainly through the overhead telegraph wires. Optic Fibre Cable was still in its
infancy. It was the pre Sam-Pitroda
days and telephone instruments were a luxury.
There were no STD facilities and what was called a “lighting call” took
a couple of hours to materialise!
At first the Bhusaval
Control Office shrugged off the lack of communication with Itarsi as
routine, but when the silence continued
it was disquieting. The railways still
had their more than 100 years old MORSE instruments functioning and there was a
class of railwaymen which is extinct now called ‘Signallers’ who used the
DOT-DASH-DOT method to raise Bhopal.
Finally the headquarters control office at Mumbai confirmed that there
was something seriously amiss at Bhopal which in those days was an area
controlled from the Jhansi Railway Divisional Office. Communication to Bhopal was via Itarsi.
By
about 6-00 a.m it was evident that a disaster had struck Bhopal. No trains were leaving Bhopal and those
which entered just seemed to have disappeared into a ‘black hole’ till the yard
was full and no more trains could be admitted.
The
initial reports were almost flippant – “…. some evil fairy has struck and sleeping
sickness has overtaken Bhopal….” Wild
rumours started spreading. In the
aftermath of the 1984 riots the militant Sikh organisations were blamed for
everything.
Black
3rd December brought the news that people had been dropping dead
like flies in Bhopal and those who could manage were scrambling into trains
which were running away from Bhopal.
There was a mass exodus with the Government functionaries abandoning
Bhopal and commandeering whatever vehicles were available.
As the next shift
railway workers streamed in at Bhopal they saw the horrifying sight of their
colleagues slumped over at the workspot.
Signalmen and Stationmasters in the busy NISHATPURA yard which was the
epicentre of the gas leak had collapsed with the signal levers still in their
hands. Since the signals did not turn
green the engine drivers, died in their cabs dutifully waiting for the
signals. Clerks at the booking windows
had keeled over with the ticket boxes and the cash safe wide open. The only redeeming feature was that the
deadly gas had struck without fear or favour and even thieves dare not enter
Bhopal!
Back at the Bhusaval Control Office
the full impact of the happenings at Bhopal was still sinking in. Plans were made to send medical aid and
manpower to Bhopal to restart the operations.
In the glorious
tradition of Indian Railways not one employee questioned the decision to send
people to Bhopal. Whenever there is a
disaster, man made or natural, it is ingrained
in railwaymen to rush to the scene of the disaster and none will quit
his post till the job is done. The last
civilian to leave Tezpur when the Chinese invaded India in 1962 was the Station
Master!
Meanwhile,
rumours had spread that a second wave of
poisonous gas, even deadlier than the first one, had broken loose and the steady exodus further swelled due to the rush of the panic stricken residents.
While
these streams of humanity were going out of Bhopal, there was one band of
railwaymen going towards Bhopal. In
retrospect one may say “Fools rushed where angels feared to tread,” but at that point of time the Railwaymen and
women of Itarsi, 90 kms. from Bhopal banded themselves together and set off in a caravan of road
vehicles to the illfated city of Bhopal.
Unmindful of the people exhorting them to go back, the unsung heroes
armed with food and medicine, wended their way to Bhopal.
Nobody
knew exactly what had happened except that some gas had engulfed Bhopal and as
the sun rose the gas diffused and finally dispersed leaving in its wake thousands
of humans choking, coughing and blinded.
The “council of war” at the Bhusaval control office decided that a
relief train should start immediately. On the presumption that only a nerve gas
could disable people so rapidly, all the stocks of ATROPINE were commandeered
along with hundreds of vials of eye drops.
The
Special Train carrying a multidisciplinary team of railway employees including
doctors and para-medics, covered the distance of 302 kms. from Bhusaval to
Itarsi in 3 hours flat. When we reached
Bhopal we were informed that the Government Administration had finally got
their act together - probably shamed
into action by the railwaymen who had proceeded from Itarsi.
We were told to
organise relief operations in the Itarsi civil hospital. We
found that the ATROPINE vials and “Visine” eye drops were useless. I still do not know whether there is an
antidote to METHYL ISOCYANATE - the poisonous substance which had annihilated
everyone near the Union Carbide Factory in Bhopal.
The sight at Itarsi was something
straight out of Dante’s ‘Inferno.’
Dozens of men, women and children were writhing in agony and we watched
them in horrified helplessness. Death was a welcome relief to the victims, their eyeballs swollen red and bursting,
every breath bringing agony to their burning lungs. The screams of the tortured bodies were in different
languages. As train after train went
past Itarsi discharging the bodies of
the victims of the monstrous gas, the famous cliché that “from Kashmir to
Kanniyakumari Indian Railways is one” was poignantly apparent as we tried our
best to soothe the victims in whatever language we could speak. Faced with their end these poor souls
uncomplainingly requested that their next of kin should be informed and their
belongings taken care of. I still
cannot forget the poor blinded Malayalee boy holding my hands imploring me to
convey some important news to his mother in Kerala.
The dying wish of a TTE (Travelling
Ticket Examiner ) was that his settlement dues should be expedited and his
family cared for. In his delirious
death he kept apologising for abandoning his train and pressed the reservation
chart into the hands of another railwayman. His sightless eyes failed to reveal
that it was a doctor.
There was no way for postmortem to be
performed and all the death certificates were signed with the words “Cardiac arrest due to unknown causes”.
The railways raced back to normality
within 24 hours of the accident.
Hundreds of railwaymen still bear the physical and mental scars of that
black day.
When
I joined the Railways I was asked to make a daily prayer that there should be
no fatal railway accidents in my career and I do not have to remove mangled
bodies from a train wreck. I never
expected that I would live to see so many dead and dying humans around.
While
we continue to pray for their souls, let us salute the railwaymen who
tenaciously clung to their workspots and rushed to the scene of disaster.
V. Anand,
Ex-ADRM/BSL/CR,
Now GM/SR