Tickets please! Ten thousand commuters trying to get home clamber on top of trains at a packed station in Bangladesh
The overcrowding gets especially bad during festival time as Bangladeshi citizens return to their villages from the capital of Dhaka. The desperate passengers try to make their way home after the final prayer of Biswa Ijtema, an Islamic Congregation attended by two million people by the River Turag.
The country lacks public transport, forcing people get home any way they can and unfortunately many die due to this risky means of transportation.
With no seats and not many trains, people are forced to resort to grabbing hold of the outside and standing on the roof so they can get home.
At least 2,321 people have been crushed under trains in Dhaka division in the past eight years, figures from Dhaka’s Government Railway Police (GRP) station have revealed.
After falling steadily in 2014 and 2015, the number of fatalities rose to 305 in 2016 and has leapt again in the 2017 year to December 21 to 336 – the highest level seen in the period. Experts attribute the rise to a lack of public awareness and persistent land grabbing near the tracks. “People across Bangladesh are getting killed in these kinds of incidents, and the reason behind it is carelessness,” Dhaka Railway police station Sub-Inspector Tofazzal Hossain said.
“We are trying to create awareness among people but if the ones using the tracks are not aware, then the death toll from this kind of incidents will not come down.” After analysing the data taken from GRP station, it has been found that 422 people – or nearly one in five – were killed while walking on the railway tracks wearing headphones. Some 554 people were killed while sitting on the tracks or walking on them, 898 were killed while crossing the tracks in a hurry, 55 died after falling off the roofs of the trains, and seven were killed in other accidents.
Just look at some of these images captured from this crazy crazy train.
Passengers risk their lives by perching on the outside of the trains, which reach speeds of 50mph during the journey.
About two million people take part in Ijtema, and more than half of them need to get the train.
One photographer at the station said he saw about six people fall while he was taking the photos.
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