Seven Nepalis among 12 killed in India train accident
At least seven Nepalis were killed in the Jalgaon train accident in Maharashtra, India on Wednesday evening.
Five among seven Nepalis killed are from Sudurpaschim Province—four from Achham and one from Kailali. The names and addresses of two other Nepalis killed are yet to be ascertained.
Indian media reports said that at least 12 people died and 15 others injured after some passengers of the Pushpak Express—which was bound for Mumbai from Lucknow—jumped off the train after an alarm chain-pulling incident. They were then run over by the Karnataka Express on an adjacent track in Maharashtra’s Jalgaon district on Wednesday evening.
Earlier, media reports had put the death toll at 13, but on Thursday, Indian officials revised it down to 12 after it was confirmed that a head and a torso, initially thought to belong to different individuals, were from the same person.
Nandaram BK, his wife Maisara BK and their son Himu BK of ward 4 of Panchadewal Binayak Municipality, and Jayakala Kami of ward 4 of Kamal Bazar Municipality in Achham have been confirmed dead in the tragic train accident.
According to Lalita Malati Singh, a Nepali student currently studying journalism in India, who was present at the accident site, Radheshyam Bhai and Lachchhiram Kanu Pasawan from Nepal also died in the accident. Three Nepalis are being treated at a local hospital, she added.
Jayakala, aged 60, left for Maharashtra on Sunday after her sons and daughters-in-law in Mumbai called her for treatment. Nandaram was her distant relative. She decided to go to India with him to meet her family members and get treatment there. Four of her five sons are working in different places in India.
Jayakala, who had been suffering from chronic stomach ailments, had been unable to get proper treatment due to the family’s poor finances. She left for India after her son called her for a family gathering as well as medical treatment. But Jayakala, Nandaram, his wife and son were killed on the way.
“I arrived at the accident site on Thursday. The family members received the body. We plan to perform the funeral rites at Bhiwandi, Maharashtra, tomorrow [Friday]," said Raju Bishwakarma, Jayakala's son-in-law who also works in India.
Meanwhile, the Railway Board (of India) has released IRs150,000 in immediate aid to the families of each deceased person. Similarly, Maharashtra government announced financial assistance of IRs500,000 to each bereaved family.
Nepal’s Sudurpaschim Province is directly impacted whenever there are major accidents in India as thousands of Nepalis from the nine districts of the province go there for work, often for seasonal employment. Lack of jobs and other income generating activities force hordes of Nepali people to leave their homeland.
The 2021 census by the National Statistics Office shows that Sudurpaschim Province has the lowest labour force participation rate (27.3 percent) in the province-wise labour market index, which is 20 percent less than the ranking of Bagmati province (47.1), the province with the highest rate. The employment participation rate based on the population, at 24.1 percent, is also the lowest in Sudurpaschim.
For generations, these underprivileged people have relied on Indian towns and cities to earn livelihoods for their families, often at the cost of their social wellbeing.
As many as 16 Nepalis died after a landslide washed away three hotels in Gaurikund, a pilgrimage site that serves as a basecamp for a trek to Kedarnath, a venerated Hindu temple in Uttarakhand state, in August 2023. Indian authorities had retrieved 12 bodies but could not locate the remaining four buried under the debris.
Badrinath, Kedarnath and Rudraprayag—highly revered places for Hindus—are also key labour destinations for many Nepali workers, mainly from Sudurpaschim and Karnali provinces. Nepalis want to work in these areas as they can make good money in a relatively short time.
In May last year, two Nepalis were killed in an incident triggered by cooking gas leakage in the Indian metropolis of Bangalore. Three others were injured. Madan Bohara of Bajhang in Sudurpaschim, his wife Premjala, and their three children had sustained burn injuries in the tragic incident. Bohara’s four-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter died in the course of treatment.
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