By IANS,
New Delhi : Sunday’s stampede at the New Delhi Railway Station brought back memories of Nov 13, 2004, when a similar incident claimed lives of five people as they were trying to catch a Bihar-bound train.
Like Sunday’s incident, trouble started at the foot overbridge when people wanting to reach their hometowns to celebrate the Chhat festival rushed to catch the train. The tragedy occurred when station authorities announced an eleventh-hour change of platform for the train.
The crowd jostled and fell one over another, in the stampede killing four women and a teenaged girl.
A high level inquiry was ordered and subsequently several measures were announced to prevent a repeat.
One of the steps was not to change the train’s platform at the last minute. Others were to use the CCTVs to keep a check on passenger flow on the platforms and to set up several control rooms to monitor train movement.
It was also decided to keep the station de-congested all the time by not issuing platform tickets so that only passengers could enter the platforms.
At that time, there were two overbridges. Authorities later added three more such foot overbridges along with escalators.