Kishangunj, Aug. 5 :     The Centre today suspended five senior officers of the Northeast Frontier Railway and asked its general manager to go on leave. It also set up a one-man judicial commission to probe the Gaisal crash between the Brahmaputra Mail and the Avadh-Assam Express, which claimed 287 lives. Salvage operations at the site were called off early today. In Calcutta, chief minister Jyoti Basu ordered that a mass cremation be held tomorrow as the rotting corpses posed a health hazard. In New Delhi, Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee accepted the resignation of railway minister Nitish Kumar, who put in his papers owning moral responsibility. NFR general manager Rajendra Nath has been asked to go on leave. Those suspended include chief operations manager S.B. Bhattacharya, chief safety officer R.K. Thanga, divisional railway manager (Katihar) S.N. Mukherjee, senior divisional operating manager (Katihar) V.R. Lenin and divisional safety officer (Katihar) M. Hariram Rao. The NFR officers? association in Guwahati expressed surprise that the suspensions had been ordered even before the probe report had been submitted. But with the elections coming up, the government cannot be seen as lax in fixing responsibility for such a devastating accident. At Kishangunj, chief commissioner of railway safety N. Mani grilled railway employees on how the Avadh-Assam Express could have moved onto the wrong track. A preliminary probe revealed that the disaster occurred when the Express moved onto the track on which the Brahmaputra Mail was heading towards it near the Panjipara cabin. On Monday, Kumar deputed Mani to hold the inquiry. Mani spent a long time questioning Avadh-Assam Express guard J.C. Chaudhury and his Brahmaputra Mail counterpart T.C. Sarkar. The guards are considered the most important witnesses. Chaudhury said the train was moving at full speed when the collision took place, but he repeatedly claimed he did not know how it jumped onto the adjacent track. Most of those summoned today were involved in supervising movement of trains on the Kishangunj-Gaisal stretch that night. Mohammed Mustafa, coach attendant of the Mail, could offer no clues as he had fainted, he said. Drivers and frontguards of the two trains died on the spot. The surviving guards ? Chaudhury and Sarkar ? were in the rear of the trains. All railway employees gave verbal statements which were typed outside the room in which Mani held the interrogation. After the statements were handed to him, he grilled them. The arrival of RSS leaders for deposition created a sensation at the Nirman Bhavan, where the hearings are being held. RSS Kishangunj district president Amar Chandra Yadav told Mani the ISI was involved in the accident. Two cabinmen and the assistant station master of Gaisal and a cabinman from Kishangunj are absconding. The NFR headquarters in Maligaon, Assam, suspended two employees for negligence of duty during rescue operations at Gaisal.