Odisha tragedy survivor: 'Man saved me from dead bodies' pile. Who was he?'
Malik was on Friday aboard a general compartment of the Coromandel Express, heading to Chennai where he works in a bottling plant.
Kolkata: They thought he was dead. On Friday evening, next to a mangled general compartment of the Coromandel Express, lay 24-year-old Biswajit Malik, completely motionless. Around him, there was pandemonium in the wake of India’s worst rail accident in three decades. The injured were being located, the bodies of the dead were being piled together. Suddenly, the barely conscious Malik felt the thuds of bodies being thrown on him. Grievously injured, and now increasingly suffocated, all Malik could do was feebly wave his left hand from under the pile of bodies. That one motion, and the man whose feet Malik’s left hand accidentally touched proved to be the difference between life and being left for dead.
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Malik, who is now recuperating in a hospital in Kolkata, was on Friday aboard a general compartment of the Coromandel Express, heading to Chennai where he works in a bottling plant. A little before 7pm, he was sitting in one of the lower seats, playing a game on his mobile phone, when the train collided into a stationery goods train at Balasore’s Bahanaga Bazaar, some of its derailed compartments then hitting the Yeshwantpur-Howrah Express, in an accident that has left 288 dead and over 1,100 injured.
“Immediately after the accident, it just went dark. I remember there was an unbearable pain in my right hand and my right leg was stuck between two seats that had crumped into one. I don’t remember how long I stayed like that,” Malik said.
But Malik, somehow extricated himself and climbed down the side of the mangled compartment. “I borrowed a mobile phone from a local and called my father to inform him that the train had met with an accident. I could barely talk due to pain,” he said.
All this time, Malik said, he had no idea how serious his injuries were. But at one point, just after that phone call, he saw that right wrist had almost been severed from his arm, and his ankle seemed broken. The weight of this discovery, and perhaps the blood loss, meant Malik crumpled to the ground, and lost consciousness.
Helaram Malik, Biswajit’s father said that rescuers who were bringing out bodies from the compartments thought he was dead. “They dumped a few dead bodies on him. But luckily, he gained his consciousness and stretched out his left arm, which accidentally touched the feet of a rescuer passing by,” said Helaram.
That man immediately pulled Biswajit out from under the bodies, and took him to the Basudevpur Community Health Centre.
Back in Howrah, Helaram Malik, who works at a local shop, had alerted his neighbours after his son’s phone call. At least four young men from the area – Prabir Malik, Rakesh Singh, Sumit Malik and Biswajit Malik (all in their early and mid 20s) – were all in the train together. People from the neighbourhood booked two vehicles, a Sumo and a Matador, to rush to Balasore. Before Helaram reached on Saturday, he had another phone call from his son. “He told me he was in a hospital, but couldn’t say which one,” Malik said.
Once they reached, Helaram went from one hospital to another; first the district hospital in Balasore, then Bhadrak, and then finally the community health centre in Basudevpur. “We released him from the hospital and brought him back to Kolkata where he was admitted in the SSKM hospital on Sunday. He has already undergone a surgery on his wrist which was almost severed and is likely to undergo another surgery on his ankle very soon,” said Helaram.
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Of the four young men who travelled together, three are alive and have been traced, while one – Sumit – is missing.
Malik feels lucky to be alive, but has one small regret. He doesn’t know the identity of the man who saved his life. “This is my second life. But I haven’t been able to thank the person who pulled me out of the pile of dead bodies. He stayed with me for the next few hours but left before my father arrived. I may never know who he is,” he said.
