The accident occurred on Thursday morning when the bus was passing an unmanned railway crossing. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has ordered a probe.
Thirteen school students died and eight were injured when the van they were travelling in was hit by a train at an unmanned crossing in Uttar Pradesh’s Khushinagar district on Thursday morning, an official said.
The children, students of Divine Public School, were killed on the spot when Thawe-Kapatanganj passenger train (55075) crashed into the van at Behpurva, said Ved Prakash, spokesperson for Railways.
There were at least 25 people, including children in the van, most of whom were below the age of 10 years, the official said.
Police officer OP Singh said the bus driver also was killed in the accident.
Expressing condolences, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announced an ex-gratia of Rs two lakh each to the deceased’s family and ordered an inquiry by the Gorakhpur commissioner.
Railway minister Piyush Goyal also announced an ex-gratia of Rs two lakh each for the kin of the deceased and tweeted that senior officials would probe the accident.
“It was unmanned level crossing gate at Behpurva, with Gate Mitra deployed there. He tried to stop but unfortunate incident happened at unmanned gate 45 near Dudhi station in Banaras division,” the spokesperson said in New Delhi.
An accident relief medical train from Gorakhpur has been dispatched to the site, he said.
This is the second tragic incident this month involving schoolchildren. Twenty-three children were among 30 killed when a private school bus ferrying them home veered off the road and plunged into a 200-foot-deep gorge at Malakwal in Nurpur in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh on April 9.
India’s railroad network is one of the world’s largest with 23 million people riding daily on about 11,000 passenger trains.
