23 dead in Uttar Pradesh rail accident; three trains cancelled, six rerouted

Agencies
August 20, 2017

Lucknow, Aug 20: In a series of tweets, Prabhu said Minister of State Manoj Sinha has rushed to the spot while the Chairman of Railway Board and Member Traffic have been asked to oversee rescue and relief operations. "Rescue operations have been completed. All injured shifted to hospital. Restoration work will start now. Still monitoring situation closely. "Have directed Railway Doctors to visit the injured in hospitals and ensure best possible medical help. "Restoration work commenced. First coach, re-railed at 2355 hrs. My heart goes out for the families, kin of the deceased and injured (sic)," Prabhu earlier said in a series of tweets.

NDRF DG Sanjay Kumar said the rescue operations began at 8.50 pm and four teams were pressed into service. "Bodies of two males and a woman were extricated from beneath the mangled remains, while efforts were on to pull out another woman's body," he said in Khatauli.

The DG said the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) personnel were trying to bring back to the ground one of the coaches which had settled atop the other due to the impact of the crash, adding, "So technically the operation would be over once we put the coach back on ground." Kumar said initially the NDRF had sent two teams from Ghaziabad but after seeing the magnitude of the tragedy two more teams were pressed into service.

Another senior NDRF official at the accident site said, "About 165 personnel, including dog-trainers, worked on the rescue operations." Medical vans were also rushed to the site. The Railway ministry was also in close touch with the Uttar Pradesh government to coordinate rescue and relief operations. In Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh ADG (Law and Order) Anand Kumar said that top priority was being accorded to ensure prompt rescue and relief work.

Meanwhile, Railways spokesperson Anil Saxena said, "Initially, we thought that it was only 4-5 coaches, now we have ascertained that 14 coaches have derailed. As of now our focus is on rescue and not on finding reasons for the accident." Since darkness was impeding rescue operations, he said the power department officials had been directed to ensure that there was no shortage of electricity. Kumar also said IMA chapters in Meerut zone have been alerted and asked to ensure adequate and prompt medical care to the injured.

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath enquired about the accident and directed officials to take all possible action, an official spokesperson said. Uttar Pradesh ministers Suresh Rana and Satish Mahana visited the accident site and took stock of the situation after chief minister Adityanath directed them to reach Khatauli to expedite rescue and relief operations. The derailment of the Utkal Express also resulted in cancellation of three train services and diversion of six others.

According to a statement from railway ministry, the 14521/14522 Ambala-Delhi-Ambala Intercity Express, 18478 Haridwar-Puri Utkal Kalinga Express and the 14682 Jalandhar- New Delhi Intercity Express, which will commence journey on Sunday, stood cancelled.

Manoj Baliyan, a local resident, said he heard a massive thud and the next thing he saw was a blue railway coach flying over another coach and hit his house like a giant projectile. When the 42-year-old man gathered his wits all he couldsee was scores of bodies in front of the house, along the railway track.

"A coach had even rammed the boundary wall of a college building near our house," said Baliyan, who runs a shop in the area. "There was a massive thud and one of the coaches flew over the pantry car and rammed our house's porch," he said. The other end of the S2 coach is resting over the pantry coach with its doors shattered.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
January 13,2020

New Delhi, Jan 13: The Supreme Court on Monday commenced hearing on issues related to discrimination against women in various religions and at religious places including Kerala's Sabarimala Temple.

A nine-judge bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde said that it was not considering review pleas in the Sabarimala case.

“We are not hearing review pleas of Sabarimala case. We are considering issues referred to by a 5-judge bench earlier,” the bench said.

The apex court had on November 14 asked a larger bench to re-examine various religious issues, including the entry of women into the Sabarimala Temple and mosques and the practice of female genital mutilation in the Dawoodi Bohra community.

While the five-judge bench unanimously agreed to refer religious issues to a larger bench, it gave a 3:2 split decision on petitions seeking a review of the apex court's September 2018 decision allowing women of all ages to enter the Sabarimala shrine in Kerala.

A majority verdict by then Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices A M Khanwilkar and Indu Malhotra decided to keep pending pleas seeking a review of its decision regarding entry of women into the shrine, and said restrictions on women in religious places was not restricted to Sabarimala alone and was prevalent in other religions as well.

The minority verdict by Justices R F Nariman and D Y Chandrachud gave a dissenting view by dismissing all review pleas and directing compliance of its September 28 decision.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
May 26,2020

In a startling revelation, cybersecurity researchers have claimed that a hacker has posted personal details of nearly 2.9 crore Indian job seekers at one of the hacking forums on the Dark Web for free.

As part of the regular sweep over the Deep Web and Dark Web, researchers from cybersecurity firm Cyble came across an interesting item, where a threat actor posted 2.3GB (zipped) file on one of the hacking forums.

"The leak actually has a lot of personal details of millions of Indians Job seekers from different states," Cyble said in its blog on Friday.

This breach includes sensitive information such as email, phone, home address, qualification and work experience etc from job seekers spanning across states, from New Delhi to Mumbai and Bengaluru. 

Cybercriminals are always on the lookout for such personal information to conduct various nefarious activities such as identity thefts, scams, and corporate espionage.

"It appears to have originated from a resume aggregator service given the sheer volume and detailed information," it added.

Cyble indexed this information at ‘AmIbreached.com; – Cyble's data breach monitoring and notification platform.

Cyble researchers have identified a sensitive data breach on the dark web where an actor has leaked personal details of nearly 29 million Indian job seekers from various states. 

"Cyble's team is still investigating this further and will be updating their article as they bring more facts to the surface,” it said in a statement.

Cyble said it has acquired the leaked data. 

The same cyber security firm earlier exposed that Bengaluru-based edtech firm Unacademy was hacked.

According to Cyble researchers, nearly 22 million Unacademy user accounts were affected and the data was dumped and sold on Dark Web.

'We would like to assure our users that no sensitive information such as financial data or location has been breached," said Hemesh Singh, Co- Founder and CTO, Unacademy, in a statement.

In April, hackers sold personal data of a whopping 267 million Facebook users for just Rs 41,500 (approximately 500 Euros) that includes email addresses, names, Facebook IDs, dates of birth and phone numbers.

No passwords of the 267 million Facebook users were exposed by the hacker, according to Cyble.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
January 16,2020

New Delhi, Jan 16: Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat on Thursday said that he supported a negotiated peace deal between the US and Taliban in Afghanistan.

Gen. Rawat was speaking along with other world leaders at Raisina dialogue organised by India's influential think-tank Observer Research Foundation (ORF).

Arguing that terrorism was going to stay in the world as long as states were going to use it against other states, he said it was important to prevent states from using terrorism as a "proxy war".

"The only way to deal with it was what the US did post 9/11," he said, adding that the war against terror was necessary.

However, now a peace deal with Taliban is required, Gen. Rawat said.

"It must be a negotiated peace deal so that the Taliban stops using terrorism," he added. Hinting that the US should maintain its presence in Afghanistan, the CDS said that though Afghan security forces are now equipped to fight back terror groups in Afghanistan but they still need support.

The newly appointed CDS officially confirmed that India has shifted its stance on Taliban. India has traditionally been opposed to the Pakistan-backed Taliban in Afghanistan. Thousands of Afghans were given refuge in India when they fled the country due to oppression and terrorism of the Taliban regime. India is in alignment with the democratically elected government in Kabul that the Taliban remains supported by Pakistan.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.