India Crash Victims Cremated

As Hindu priests chanted, thousands of villagers from Gaisal gathered by a Himalayan river Friday to watch the cremation of 145 unclaimed bodies from one of India's worst train accidents.

Workers stacked wood into funeral pyres by the Balasan River to burn the remains of some of the 285 people killed in Monday's train collision. Most of the victims were so charred and crushed during the accident that their families were unable to recognize them.

Only 85 bodies have been identified since rescuers started tearing into the mangled wreckage of the trains, said Buddhadev Bhattacharya, police minister of the West Bengal state.

To help process any compensation claims brought by the victims' next of kin, photographs of the bodies were taken before they were prepared for cremation, officials said.

Relatives of those thought to have died in the collision have scoured two hospitals in northeastern India where the dead are laid out.

Officials were puzzled over what to do with the corpses as they decomposed rapidly in the 95-degree heat. Hospital workers had little ice and few chemicals to preserve the bodies, and a thick stench wafted from the clinics.

Fearing an epidemic, Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, the top elected official of West Bengal state, ordered the mass cremations. "The decomposed bodies are posing serious health hazards for the local people," he said Thursday.

Hindu cremations are often held near rivers - many of them considered holy - and the ashes are sprinkled into the water after the ceremony. Many Hindus take the ashes of their kin to holy towns to immerse them with elaborate religious rituals.

Doctors who examined bodies at two government hospitals said at least six of the dead were Muslims, and officials said they would be buried with Islamic rites by the Mahananda River.

The collision occurred as two trains sped through the predawn darkness. Many of the 2,500 passengers were sleeping when one train was inexplicably diverted into the path of the other near Gaisal station, about 310 miles north of Calcutta.

The government suspended six top rail officials while it investigates the collision, and the Cabinet announced that a former Supreme Court justice would conduct an inquiry. Railway Minister Nitish Kumar resigned Tuesday to take moral responsibility for the disaster, and spoke of "criminal negligence" by railroad staff.

Indian Railways says its safety record has improved in terms of the overall amount of traffic, but critics say it has failed to improve a record of some 300 accidents a year, about two-thirds of which are blamed on staff negligence.

Experts say a surge in traffic and slow modernization has made India's 66,800-mile network increasingly vulnerable to accidents.