Foreign News: Part Way Home

As the fast Punjab Mail train pulled out of Calcutta one evening last week, most of the passengers aboard were Punjabis returning to their home province for the Hindu marriage season and its round of celebrations. But on this trip the Punjab Mail took them only part way home. Two hundred miles northwest of Calcutta the engine lurched off a bridge. Nearly 100 passengers were killed, 150 injured.

A survivor, Abdul Qaiyum Ansari, Minister of Rehabilitation of Bihar State, inspected the track where the accident had occurred. He found that the iron fishplates used to join sections of rail had been removed in two places and that the disconnected end of one rail had been pushed slightly inward.

It was India’s 92nd case of railway sabotage in six months. It was also, many Indians were convinced, part of a Communist campaign to disrupt the country’s railroad system.