Four sanitary workers were run over by the speeding New Delhi-Thiruvananthapuram Kerala Express at 3 pm on Saturday.
The dead hailed from Tamil Nadu and were working for a firm hired by the Railways to remove the garbage and waste from railway tracks. Three bodies have been recovered and taken to the Government Hospital Shoranur for autopsy. Search for the fourth body, of that of a male, was called off by evening because of strong undercurrents in the river and fading lights. The Fire Brigade told media persons that a scuba team would be deployed on Sunday morning to retrieve the body.
All the victims hailed from Villupuram in Tamil Nadu. The incident occurred when the workers were collecting plastic garbage thrown at the tracks by passengers of trains. They were working at Kochin Bridge built over the Bharathapuzha which comes immediately after the Shoranur Railway Station.
Though there were ten workers in the team, six of them ran to safety while the remaining four (Lakshmanan, Valli, Rani and Lakshmanan) could not make it and were run over by the speeding train.
Till the time of going to press, the Railways remained tight-lipped about the details of the accident. The Railways had no answers to queries like whether the workers had been informed to stay away from the bridge as the super-fast train was approaching the bridge.
