Balasore accident: CBI charge sheet against three railway employees

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Saturday filed a charge sheet against three railway employees in connection with the June 2 train accident in Balasore, Odisha that claimed over 290 lives. The three-two engineers and a technician-were arrested by the agency in July. The two engineers are Arun Kumar Mahanta, who was then senior section engineer (signal), and Mohammed Amir Khan, who was section engineer. The third person is technician Pappu Kumar. All three were posted in Balasore at the time of the accident.

The trio have been charged with culpable homicide (not amounting to murder); causing disappearance of evidence of offence with common intention and endangering safety of persons travelling by railways by wilful act or omission. The charge sheet was filed by the CBI on Saturday in the court of special judicial magistrate, Bhubaneswar (Odisha). The CBI had taken over the investigation of the case on June 6 from the railway police in Odisha. The agency had re-registered the FIR, originally registered by the railway police, on charges of "negligence not amounting to culpable homicide", among others, under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Railways Act.