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Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee President Deepak Baij interacts with a victim injured in a train accident at a hospital, in Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. The death toll from the collision of a MEMU passenger train with a goods train on Tuesday has risen to 11, with several others injured. (PTI Photo)
Amid the anxious crowd outside the mortuary at Bilaspur’s Chhattisgarh Institute of Medical Sciences (CIMS), Yogeswar, a gangly teenager, lifts his unconscious mother Radhika and places her on the stairs, gently prodding her, tears running down his own cheeks. As the family tries to revive Radhika, some nurses passing by stop to offer her water.
Radhika fainted after she heard that her mother Godavari died in the Bilaspur train accident, her husband Jhaduram says.
“We told her of her aunt Gotibai’s death but not her mother’s. We just told her that her mother was being treated for injuries,” Jhaduram tells The Indian Express. “But when we got here, an official at the post mortem centre accidentally named the people who died and Radhika came to know.”
Godavari and Gotibai, 60, were among the 11 people killed when a passenger train heading towards Bilaspur railway station rammed into a stationary goods train a few kilometres from the city. The collision has left families shattered and survivors recounting scenes of chaos and horror.
At hospitals and mortuaries in Bilaspur, grief and disbelief hang heavy, as those who lived through the crash describe what unfolded inside the mangled first coach of the ill-fated train.
Among them was Mathurabai, whose family was in the first coach. The family had been heading to Pune via Bilaspur when the crash occurred.
“It was a horrifying experience,” Mathurabai says. “I saw blood on the wall of the coach. People had fallen on top of each other, some of them dead. People were screaming and crying for help.”
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Mathurabai’s 17-year-old Satyendra Bhaskar, who was seated by the door, managed to escape. The family is currently undergoing treatment at CIMS.
“As soon as the train collided, I jumped down from a height of 10 feet. But my parents were stuck inside and had to be pulled out to safety by other passengers,” says Satyendra.
The experience has shaken them all, she says. “I managed to extricate herself from under a seat that had fallen on me, and was eventually pulled out. But I was afraid that my son had come under the wheels. Luckily, we found him safe,” she says.
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