Hampi Express: Most of the victims are labourers

ANANTAPUR: There was smell of charred bodies and wailing of the injured at Penukonda railway station on Tuesday. All the passengers in the crowded women’s general compartment of Hampi Express, which bore the brunt, were migrant labourers.The five members of a family from Kenchanaguda tanda of Siriguppa taluk in Bellary district were sugarcane cutters bound for a village in Tamil Nadu. Four of them--head of the family Rudrappa Naik (35), his wife Hemabhai (28), daughter Pawanibhai (12) and son Muthanaik (9)--were charred to death in the mishap. Another son, Nagaraj Naik (6), who survived with severe burns, was seen crying inconsolably. Ten relatives of the family were lucky as they boarded another general bogie which was not affected. Thakur Naik (28) from Puliguttapalle tanda of Guntakal mandal, who was going to Bengaluru to bring back his sisters doing a tailoring course there, did not know that it would be his last journey. He and his relative Narayana Naik of the same village were killed in the mishap. They boarded the ill-fated train at Guntakal and died within a few hours.