Bangladesh seeks answers as train faces second deadly act of sabotage in a week

Mohanganj Express comes under alleged arson attack a week after deliberate damage to the line caused derailment

The killing of four people in an alleged arson attack on Mohanganj Express a week after deadly derailment of the Dhaka-Netrokona train because of the damage deliberately caused to the line have left many questions unanswered.

The incidents involving the train amid the BNP’s series of hartals, or shutdowns, and transport blockades are among at least 27 attacks on trains since violence during the party’s Oct 28 rally in Dhaka.

The derailment of seven coaches in Gazipur on Dec 13 killed one passenger and injured many while the death toll in the fire in Dhaka’s Tejgaon was four.

Bangladesh Railway started using the three burnt coaches in 2019. The fire caused a total damage worth Tk 30 million, the authorities estimate.

On Tuesday afternoon, nearly 12 hours after the incident, smoke was still billowing from the burnt coaches, while the air was filled with the smell of burnt plastics.

Charred belongings, such as clothes, rice from a sack, bananas, vegetables, children’s bags, books, and other things littered the coaches.

The broken glasses indicated many passengers jumped off the train through the windows, said a Fire Service and Civil Defence official on the spot.

ARE TRAINS SAFE?

Travellers started preferring train journeys to bus trips because buses became the prime target of arson attacks during the BNP’s blockades and hartals.

Now they wonder if train journeys are actually safe.

“People are dying in acts of sabotage one after another. The railways cannot be left in the hands of the saboteurs. Killings cannot be part of politics,” said Shyamaledu Pal, president of Netrokona chapter of civil rights organisation SUJAN.


Nadira Akter Poppy, 35, was on her way back to Dhaka with her two sons after visiting her village home following the end of the children’s annual exams.

Poppy and her 3-year-old son Yasin Rahman Pias were among the four victims killed in the fire. Her brother and elder son managed to escape the deadly fire.

“My daughter had thought train journeys would have been safe. Now she is dead on a train trip,” her father Fazlul Haque lamented, demanding justice for the woman and her son.

WHY MOHANGANJ EXPRESS?

Saifullah Emran, general secretary of literature group Netrokona Sahitya Samaj, said the common people should also come forward to secure the railway tracks in their areas.

“And we need to think about why the railways are being targeted repeatedly.”

Mir Moniruzzaman, a resident of Netrokona, asked why Mohanganj Express is becoming the target. “We used this route safely until now. But we are afraid now.”

Shafiqul Islam Talukder, another resident of the district, raised the same question.

“We, all the people of the district, not just members of any particular political group, use this train. Then why is this happening?”

Railways Minister Nurul Islam Sujan also wondered why the train on the Dhaka-Netrokona route came under attack two times in a week.

“Although bus, trucks and trains were torched alike from 2013-2015, this time the BNP has chosen the railways to spread panic among people and make their blockades a success,” he said.

BNP leader Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, however, denied responsibility for the fire incident, calling for an unbiased investigation to find out who caused the derailment of Mohanganj Express and then torched it.

“This is a plot to pass the blame onto the protesters,” he said.

Although Rizvi condemned attacks on trains, the incidents during the BNP’s protests indicate that the protesters are involved in these, said Sujan.

Md Didar Ahmed, additional inspector general at Railway Police, thinks the saboteurs target trains in the wee hours because it is safe for them to flee at that time after the incidents on unguarded tracks.

WHY WAS THE TRAIN NOT STOPPED?

Anwar Hossain, a superintendent of Railway Police, aka region's rail police, said passengers noticed a fire at the connection point between the 7th and 8th carriages of the Mohanganj Express train after passing the airport station.

He said the 7th compartment attendant, Mainuddin Manik, tried to put it out with fire extinguishers but could not control it. The fire then spread to the adjacent compartments.

Anwar said it remains unclear why the train continued travelling to Tejgaon Station instead of stopping at Cantonment or Banani stations after the fire broke out.

He acknowledged that a train cannot be halted abruptly, but suggested railway officials could better explain this decision.

Several people were also injured while trying to escape the fire. One of them, 53-year-old Nurul Haque aka Abdul Kader, received a head injury and was admitted to Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

He also observed railway workers rushing with fire extinguishers to put out the fire. However, it is unclear why they did not inform the train's conductor or driver about the fire situation.

Each train compartment has a designated attendant, and the entire train is overseen by a guard or conductor. The train's engine is operated by a loco master and an assistant.

In case of an emergency, there is a system in place for attendants to stop the train. But this emergency protocol was not utilised during the fire.

Khaled Mosharraf, the train's guard, said that the attendants did not inform him about the fire.

He was in the last compartment of the 14-carriage train when the fire started in the middle carriages.

He said he noticed smoke coming from the front compartments after passing Mohakhali and while checking for a green signal at Tejgaon.

He immediately called the train driver, who then stopped the train.

Loco master Dilip Kumar Mandal said he was unaware of the compartment fire because no one alerted him.

He explained that it is almost impossible to notice a fire from his position in the engine compartment without being informed.

He only stopped the train once he got information about the fire at the Tejgaon station.

No official has clarified why the attendants in compartments 6, 7, and 8 didn't try to stop the train when it caught fire.

When asked about the train attendants' action during the fire, AM Salah Uddin, a joint director general of Bangladesh Railway, said that the delay in stopping the train is under scrutiny.

He said identifying whether the train guard or loco master could have intervened would pinpoint where the lapse was.

He also said they believed the fire in the train compartment was deliberately set by someone inside.

The number of casualties in the deadly train blaze in Dhaka’s Tejgaon could have increased manifold had the Mohanganj Express train not stopped at Tejgaon Station.

Parbat Ali, the assistant station master of Tejgaon Railway Station, the last batch of passengers boarded the train at the Airport Station and crossed the Cantonment Station at 4:50am.

“The Mohanganj Express is not scheduled to stop at the Tejgaon Station. I had a green flag in my hand as I had cleared the train for crossing,” he said.

“However, the train stopped about 500 yards away from the main station as I signalled it to stop after seeing plumes of smoke billowing out of the train’s compartment.”

The fire had already spread to two other compartments by the time the fire service was informed, said Ali.

Later, workers and passengers of another train waiting at the platform doused the fire.

Ali believes that saboteurs boarded the train at the airport station and moved to another compartment after torching the train.

“I think they got down at the Tejgaon Station,” he said.

Law enforcers could not extract the CCTV footage at the station as the system did not have any storage.