The civic authorities will take a call on Monday morning as to whether to start the cremation from Monday or Tuesday. It will depend on when the team of CBI officersis constituted to be present during the exercise.
To cremate 28 bodies, nine bodies each will be cremated for two consecutive days and the third day, 10 bodies will be cremated.The development followed the CBI, which is probing the accident, writing to Khurda district collector to go ahead with the cremation of the unidentified bodies, currently preserved in AIIMS. The Khurda administration wrote to BMC to be in readiness.
“A CBI team is likely to be present during the exercise of bringing the bodies from AIIMS to the crematorium. We are not sure when they will come. But we are prepared for the cremation, keeping the necessary logistics ready,” said BMC commissioner Vijay Amruta Kulange.
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It has been a little over four months since the bodies were kept preserved at AIIMS.
The nerve-numbing accident took 296 lives and left 1000 injured. So far, out of 81 bodies kept preserved in minus 10 degree Celsius in a separate container at AIIMS, here, 53 were identified with the help of DNA cross-matching. Out of the identified bodies, 51 were handed over to relatives and two were cremated here. If, cremation of 28 more bodies is carried out here, total bodies cremated in Bhubaneswar will go up to 30.
At present, two injured are still under treatment in SCB medical college and hospital, Cuttack.
The Central probe agency had earlier made it amply clear that obvious errors in the signalling system led to the accident. The callousness of the three arrested railway employees had come to the fore during investigation. However, the agency has never said it was deliberate.
In July, the south-eastern railway (SER) had suspended seven railway employees including the three arrested by the CBI in connection with the train tragedy.
