Keonjhar: The outbreak of a fire in a moving train triggered panic near Tilikidhara station in the district with railway authorities instituting a probe into the mishap.
All the passengers, who had boarded the train, were safe as the fire broke out in the luggage van.
The mishap took place when the Keonjhar-Bhubaneswar Fast Passenger was passing through Tilikidhara station.
The parcel van carrying luggage of the CRPF personnel caught fire. Once the news spread, passengers on board started running helter-skelter in the train and jumped off it after the train was brought to halt.
"People were panicked a lot. We did not know the exact nature of the mishap. All I knew that something had happened to the train. After the fire was doused, everybody felt relieved," said a passenger, Amulya Ranjan Sahu.
The Bhubaneswar-bound train left Keonjhar station at 6.20am. The smoke billowing out of the luggage van was spotted at 8.10am.
As the loco pilot spotted the fire, the train was immediately halted and the fire was doused before it could spread further, said the East Coast Railway's senior public relation officer Nirakar Das.
The passengers were evacuated and provided accommodation, food and refreshment. The train left for its destination to Bhubaneswar at 3.25pm after the luggage van was detached from it, he said.
The exact cause of the mishap is yet to be ascertained. An inquiry is being conducted into the incident, said the railway authorities.
However, sources said the parcel van might have been loaded with LPG cylinder and the mishap took place probably because of explosion of the cylinder.
The East Coast Railway has of late hit the spotlight for wrong reasons.
The rolling down of an engineless Ahmedabad-Puri Express at Titlagarh in Balangir district last month had severely eroded the safety track record of the railway. As many 22 coaches of the train ran without an engine for nearly 10km on April 7.
A visibly embarrassed railway authorities had later placed seven employees under suspension in connection with the incident.
Again, an AC coach of the Howrah-Sambalpur Samaleshwari Express had caught fire last month near Sambalpur station.
