Bhubaneswar: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), on Monday detained three employees of Indian Railways including a station master and a technician for questioning in connection with the deadly triple-train accident in Odisha's Balasore district that resulted in death of at least 288 passengers and injured over 1,000 others on June 2.
According to agency sources, CBI has reportedly taken the trio to an undisclosed location where interrogation is currently underway, a source said. The agency took over the probe last week and have already questioned several people including the loco pilots. The 10-member team has also seized the mobile phones of some railway employees to examine their call records, WhatsApp messages and social media usage on the fateful day. All officers who were directly or indirectly in charge at the time of accident are under CBI's scanner.
The CBI is probing into the circumstances that led to the accident though questions like chances of conspiracy and technical glitch that were raised following the incident are still unanswered. CBI officials have visited the accident site along with the forensic and technical teams in connection with the probe.
The Bahanagar Bazar Railway Station has been sealed and no train will stop here till further orders. Also, the relay room panel room and data locker have been sealed. CBI has seized hard disks of computers that were in operation at the time of the accident.
Railway sources said initial investigation suggested that the automatic electronic signaling system was manually changed for which the software had to be tampered with. The Railways believes there was some "interference" in the signaling system but it is yet to be determined whether it was intentional or unintentional or due to the ongoing maintenance work.
