Morgue: Headmistress of school which turned into morgue recalls horror | Bhubaneswar News
Bhubaneswar: The memories are still vivid. “Blood stains on the floors and the walls, body parts strewn everywhere, bodies piled over each other,” recalled Pramila Swain, headmistress of Bahanaga High School, a year after the triple train tragedy that shook the nation on June 2, 2023.
A part of the high school, which was turned into a mortuary then, has been demolished, but the students and the teachers as well as the villagers still recall the horrific scenes they witnessed when bodies kept coming to the school.“It was gut-wrenching. Parents refused to send their children to school. We were afraid to enter the school premises. We performed rituals to purify the place, but still the scenes are ingrained in our minds,” Swain said.
Vidhan Jena, a passenger travelling from Bengaluru to Howrah, one of the trains involved in the accident, remembers the ear-piercing sound he heard when the trains collided with each other near the Bahanaga level crossing. “The sound and the scenes are still fresh in my mind. I remember when our train stopped and I glanced out. I saw bogey of the train I was travelling was on top of another train,” said Jena.
Staff members of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), who volunteered in rescue and relief operation, recalled the way they worked 24×7. “I worked at the helpdesk in the BMC then. The desperation of people looking for their relatives was beyond explanation,” Rita Mohapatra, an outsourced operator working with BMC, said.
Vijay Amruta Kulange, the then commissioner of BMC, said, “We too were in shock but we had a job to do. Our teams had done a tremendous work then.”
A part of the high school, which was turned into a mortuary then, has been demolished, but the students and the teachers as well as the villagers still recall the horrific scenes they witnessed when bodies kept coming to the school.“It was gut-wrenching. Parents refused to send their children to school. We were afraid to enter the school premises. We performed rituals to purify the place, but still the scenes are ingrained in our minds,” Swain said.
Vidhan Jena, a passenger travelling from Bengaluru to Howrah, one of the trains involved in the accident, remembers the ear-piercing sound he heard when the trains collided with each other near the Bahanaga level crossing. “The sound and the scenes are still fresh in my mind. I remember when our train stopped and I glanced out. I saw bogey of the train I was travelling was on top of another train,” said Jena.
Staff members of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), who volunteered in rescue and relief operation, recalled the way they worked 24×7. “I worked at the helpdesk in the BMC then. The desperation of people looking for their relatives was beyond explanation,” Rita Mohapatra, an outsourced operator working with BMC, said.
Vijay Amruta Kulange, the then commissioner of BMC, said, “We too were in shock but we had a job to do. Our teams had done a tremendous work then.”
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