[1/7] A general view of the Bahanaga Bazar railway station, near the site of a train collision following the accident in Balasore district in the eastern state of Odisha, India, June 5, 2023.
REUTERS/Adnan AbidiBAHANAGA BAZAR, India, June 7 (Reuters) - Few trains stop at Bahanaga Bazar, the sleepy, small rural station in the Balasore district of Odisha state where India's deadliest train accident in more than two decades happened.
"We never imagined we would witness a tragedy of such magnitude in our life time," Jasoda Nayak, a Bahanaga village council member, told Reuters.
Several railway officials at Bahanaga Bazar declined to speak to Reuters about the accident as it was now the subject of a police investigation.
While Balasore district is known for housing India's missile testing facility, most villagers in the area, which is less than 20 km (12 miles) from the Bay of Bengal coast, are farmers, fisherman or labourers.
Persons:
Adnan Abidi BAHANAGA, Jasoda Nayak, Bhagwat Prasad Ratho, Mahesh Kumar Gupta, Krishn Kaushik, Miral Fahmy, Simon Cameron, Moore
Organizations:
REUTERS, Reuters, Police, Thomson
Locations:
Balasore district, Odisha, India, Adnan Abidi BAHANAGA BAZAR, Balasore, Bhubaneswar, Bengal