Toll in Lucknow train accident touches 19

With four more youths succumbing to injuries, the toll in the Tuesday Lucknow accident touched 19 on Wednesday.

Several job seekers, riding on the roof of a train, were crushed by a low overhead bridge in Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday.

The accident occurred at Shahjahanpur after nearly 100,000 job seekers, who had assembled in Bareilly to apply for merely 416 jobs in the ITBP, were on their way home.

Following the incident, a blame game among the Centre, state government, the railways and the paramilitary Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) seems to have come up with each pointing fingers at one another.

While the state government blamed reportedly ITBP for not informing them about the magnitude of the rally, the ITBP said they had in fact sent a letter to the district magistrate of Bareilly asking him to make necessary arrangements.

The state Police, however, is blaming the ITBP for cancelling the recruitment at the last minute and leading to violence and arson by the angry aspirants.

When the police charged at the youths, hundreds climbed the Himgiri Express only to encounter with the fatal accident.

Meanwhile the railways says it had contacted the ITBP over the movement of large number of candidates by did not receive any response from officials.