Balasore, Again | Part II: Curse of Secrecy—The Demonstration Nobody Was Allowed to Read
Editorial Note: Part-I of this series was published on 24 August 2026, “Balasore, Again | Part I: The Letter Sixty Days Before”. It carries the Bondamunda panel, the Railway Board’s list of five stations and the drive that followed Balasore. This part carries what the railway proved to its own safety authority in 2018, and then forgot after filing.
In October 2018 the railway’s own signal engineers proved to the Commissioner of Railway Safety (#CRS) that wiring in a location box can make a panel read a point normal while it stands reverse on the ground. The Commissioner wrote it into his report. The report was confidential. Five years later the same mechanism killed 296 people at Bahanaga Bazar.
Editor’s Note:
This is based on a #whistleblower input. We urge Minister for Railways and Chairman/Railway Board to get matter examined. In case of clarification or any counter, we would prominently carry that clarification or rebuttal as the case may be.
The two quotations below are taken from the Commissioner of Railway Safety’s report on the New Farakka Express collision, as reproduced on this site on 14 October 2024. The original report was not read. That limit is stated again at the foot.
The same accident, for 21 years
Bondamunda was not a new thing on the night of 21 August 2026. It was the latest entry in a list the railway has been adding to since 2005.
- 2005, Gujarat. The #SabarmatiExpress ran into the rear of a container train. 17 dead.
- October 2018, #Harchandpur, near Rae Bareli. The #NewFarakkaExpress struck a goods train.
- 2 June 2023, #BahanagaBazar. The #CoromandelExpress took the loop under a green for the main line. 296 dead.
21 August 2026, Bondamunda Link ‘C’ Cabin. S23 green over a set route, and the train on the other line across the 104 crossover. Nothing was standing there, and that is the only reason you are reading about a panel and not about a body count. See Part I of this series, “Balasore, Again | Part I: The Letter Sixty Days Before”.
The same mode of failure each time. The train followed the ground, not the signal.
The Harchandpur inquiry is the one that matters most, and it matters because of what the Commissioner of Railway Safety chose to write down in it.
Four days after Harchandpur
On 22 October 2018 the Commissioner was inspecting a doubling work in North Frontier Railway. He had with him the Chief Signal and Telecommunication Engineer, Construction, and the Chief Administrative Officer, Construction.
At Tangani station, the railway’s own signal and telecommunication officials showed him something.
What the Commissioner wrote down
He recorded it in his report in these words—
“During my inspection of Doubling in #NFRailway on 22.10.2018 along with #CSTE/Construction and #CAO/Construction/I/NFR, it was demonstrated by S&T officials at Tangani station that by doing manipulation in location box wiring, it is possible to get Normal Indication of Point on Panel whereas point at site is actually in Reverse.”
Stop on that sentence.
This is not a theory advanced by a critic. It is not an allegation by a union. It is the railway’s own signalling engineers, standing in front of the statutory safety authority, demonstrating on a working station that the panel can be made to lie about where a point is standing.
They ran the experiment. The Commissioner watched it. He wrote it into his report.
And every accident in the list above is that same lie, told once, on a live line, with a train approaching.
And the data logger was disconnected
The same report carries a second observation.
“Wiring of recording relay room opening by data-logger was found disconnected. There was no recording of Relay Room Door Opening by Data Logger for quite a long time.”
So the one instrument that would have recorded who entered the relay room, and when, had been disconnected, and had stayed disconnected for a long time.
Read the two observations together. The panel can be made to lie. The record of who was in the room had been switched off. That is not a hazard. That is a hazard with the witness removed.
Look at the relay room
Here is what that relay room actually looked like.
Look at the photograph before you read on.
That is not sabotage and it is not an accident of lighting. That is a relay room in ordinary working condition on the Indian Railways, photographed by the safety authority, in the same inquiry in which its own engineers had just demonstrated how wiring in a box can make a point read normal while it stands reverse.
A General Manager can walk into such a room. A Divisional Railway Manager can walk into such a room. Either of them can see what you are seeing.
The drive locked the room and left the box
After #Balasore the Board acted, and it acted hard. Relay rooms, relay huts at level crossings and point locations went under double lock. Cable connections were verified across the zones. The then Chairman spent the better part of a year on wiring and Station Working Rules.
Now put that drive next to the 2018 report.
The demonstration at Tangani was done in a location box. The Commissioner said so, in the sentence quoted above, and he said in the same report that location boxes are points of vulnerability.
The drive of 2023 put locks on relay room doors.
How many locks can a railway hang? That was the site’s own question in October 2024, and it is still the right one. A lock is not a design. A design that permits a short cut will get one, whatever hangs on the door.
One Ministry—Two rules
Now the part that decides whether any of this is ever fixed.
The Commissioner of Railway Safety works under the Ministry of Civil Aviation. So does the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau.
One Ministry—Two rules.
The Bureau’s air accident reports go into the public domain, where every airline, every engineer and every regulator in the country can read them and correct the same defect on their own fleet. The Commissioner’s rail accident reports are kept confidential. This site set the asymmetry out on 13 June 2025, in “Accident Reports—That of Air & Rail”.
Now price that rule with the demonstration at Tangani.
In October 2018 the railway’s own engineers proved to the safety authority that location box wiring can make a panel lie about a point. That proof went into a confidential file. No #SrDSTE was required to read it. No General Manager was required to act on it. No design was hardened against it. No maintainer was ever shown it in a training school.
Five years later the same mechanism killed 296 people at Bahanaga Bazar.
A lesson nobody may read is not a lesson. It is a document that has been buried with the formalities observed.
Publish the reports
So the ask is single and it is specific.
Put the Commissioner of Railway Safety’s reports into the public domain, on the same terms and by the same Ministry that already publishes the air accident reports.
Not a summary. Not a press note. The report, with its observations and its photographs, the way the Bureau publishes an air accident report.
If it is safe to tell the country why an aircraft came down, it is safe to tell the country why a train took the wrong line.
And harden the design while you are about it. Whenever any looping or wiring is changed from what was commissioned and certified, the signals should turn red across the jurisdiction. That was this site’s proposal in October 2024 and no one has answered it since.
The demonstration at Tangani has been on a Government file for eight years.
Who is in a position to let the railway read it? #RailSafety #IndianRailways
In this series
Part I. The Letter Sixty Days Before. Published 24 August 2026, https://railwhispers.com/?p=13788. The Bondamunda panel, and the Railway Board’s own list of five stations where the signal said one road and the point stood on another, circulated to every General Manager sixty days before Balasore.
Part III. Curse of promoting incompetence-Nobody Was Ever Promoted for being Correct & Competent. Not one of those five cases was an equipment failure. Every one was a test that was not done.
Further reads on this site—newest first
24 August 2026: Balasore, Again | Part I: The Letter Sixty Days Before
13 June 2025: Accident Reports-That of Air & Rail
14 October 2024: The Member (Infrastructure) letter of 3 April 2023 and its annexure, with the 2018 Tangani record from the CRS
5 November 2023: Safety of Railways-Who will bear the cross?
14 June 2023: Why talk of Kavach is not just Meaningless it is acceptance of complete failure of IR’s top management
22 August 2026, #Railwhispers on the Bondamunda panel, eleven posts on X
References outside this site
11 June 2023, Balasore train accident: Railway Board orders double-locking arrangements for signalling assets, Business Today.