Mustafizur Rahaman Mallick, a medical officer with the ENT department of Midnapore Medical College and Hospital, was on night duty at the hospital on Friday.
Around 9.30pm, he received a call from a senior that he would have to leave for Balasore, Odisha, where a train accident seemed to have killed and injured many.
Mallick helped set up a team of 40 doctors, medical students, interns and house staff from the hospital who left for Balasore.
The Telegraph spoke to him on Saturday.
I became a doctor to serve people. I have seen pain up close. But until last night I had never thought of pulling possible survivors out of mangled railway coaches. What I experienced last night was horrific.
We reached the accident site around 1.30am.
There were people wailing all around. There were injured people on the ground awaiting assistance and there were people who no longer needed help. They were dead. Bodies were strewn all over the place.
We did not know the scale of the accident while we were on our way. Seeing the scene around us, we realised instantly that it was a disaster of a huge scale.
There was massive destruction all around us.
Rescue teams had arrived by then and the place had enough lights.
We started to pull out injured people from inside twisted and mangled coaches. We gave first-aid before they were shifted to hospital.
After staying there for some time, we headed to the nearest hospital, Fakir Mohan Medical College and Hospital in Balasore, where all the injured were being taken.
Passengers from the two trains — the Bangalore-Howrah Superfast Express and the Shalimar-Chennai Central Coromandel Express — were still being brought to the hospital.
We were a team of 40 doctors from our hospital. There were some nurses in our team, too. We introduced ourselves to the superintendent of the hospital who agreed to let us work inside the hospital.
Most of the people who were admitted to the hospital had suffered head injuries, some had fractures in one hand or one leg and some others had both limbs fractured. Some of them were crying in pain.
We stitched the open wounds of some of the patients and put on bandages.
Our primary focus was to identify the patients from Bengal.
After some time, we divided ourselves into four teams and went into the surgery, orthopaedic, eye and the ENT departments. We identified the patients from Bengal, took their phone numbers and addresses.
As time passed, the families of some of the injured passengers had reached the hospital in Balasore. Some of them were shifted to other hospitals by their families.
Among the rest, those who were in stable condition and willing to be shifted to hospitals in Bengal were transferred.
We managed the logistics, put them in ambulances that had reached there from Bengal and sent them to Midnapore Medical College. There were senior doctors at the hospital to manage the patients in Midnapore.
If anyone needed care at a higher set-up, the doctors at the Midnapore hospital would send them there.
We worked all through Saturday. I wish that I never have to see a day like this again in my life.
