Charge bosses over Potters Bar rail crash, says widow of victim

The novelist Nina Bawden, whose husband was killed in the Potters Bar rail crash, has called for corporate manslaughter charges to be brought against the contractor maintaining the track.

Ms Bawden, who was injured in the accident, said yesterday that the engineering company, Jarvis, appeared to be blaming the derailment on "little green men from Mars" rather than accept responsibility.

The Prime Minister and the Government should also take their share of the blame for failing to make railways a priority and for refusing to hold a public inquiry into the crash, she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

The novelist was one of 70 passengers injured when the final coach of a four-carriage West Anglia Great Northern train derailed and ended up wedged across two platforms at Potters Bar station in Hertfordshire. Her husband, Austen Kark, 75, was among seven people killed. The derailment on 10 May was blamed on faulty points, which Jarvis claims may have been sabotaged.

Before Christmas, CCTV footage of the area near the points was sent for electronic enhancement to the US. It is thought the video material will prove once and for all whether anyone interfered with the track. Both the British Transport Police and inspectors from the Health and Safety Executive have registered their deep scepticism that deliberate vandalism was involved.Alan Osborne, the new director of rail safety at the executive, indicated that if no manslaughter charges were brought over the Potters Bar crash, there was still a possibility of prosecutions under health and safety legislation.

Jarvis was not available for comment.