A man was given up for dead and piled with bodies after Indian train crash. His father saved his life

Death toll from Odisha train crash updated to 278 as 101 bodies are yet to be identified

A father who refused to believe that his son died in the deadly three-train collision in India ended up saving his life after discovering that the severely injured man was sent alongwith with a pile of dead bodies to a makeshift morgue.

When Helaram Malik took the 230km-long journey from his hometown in Kolkata, West Bengal, to Odisha’s Balasore district, he was told that his son Biswajit Malik was one of the 278 fatalities of the deadliest accident the country has witnessed in a century.

Mr Malik, who runs a small shop in West Bengal’s Howrah, last spoke to his son immediately after the crash when he said that he was severely injured, according to a Times of India report.

He said his son’s voice was feeble and he appeared to be in pain.

Upon reaching Balasore with his brother-in-law on the night of the accident, Mr Malik could not find his son in the hospitals where all the injured victims were taken for treatment.

The father was then asked to look for his son at the Bahanaga High School, where classrooms were turned into a makeshift morgue as hundreds of dead bodies continued to pour in.

“We were not allowed to see the bodies ourselves,” he told the newspaper.

But soon commotion broke out when they saw a hand shivering among the pile of bodies.

He said they immediately recognised Biswajit from his hand and found that he had multiple severe injuries. He was resuscitated at Balasore, after which doctors referred him to a different hospital due to the extent of his injuries.

Mr Malik signed a bond and got his son discharged to take him to Kolkata for treatment.

Biswajit was brought to Kolkata’s SSKM hospital in critical condition and is expected to undergo multiple surgeries.

He was one of the passengers in the Coromandel Express train which was travelling from Kolkata to Chennai.

The fully packed passenger train was wrongly directed towards a loop track where a freight train was already stationed and slammed into it, derailing its coaches which then collided with another superfast train coming from the opposite direction.

According to the updated death toll, 278 people were killed and 1100 were injured. Around 900 wounded people have been discharged from the hospitals while 200 are still receiving treatment.

Around 101 dead bodies are yet to be identified by next of kin..