A survivor at Howrah station. (Bishwarup Dutta)

Batches of Jnaneswari Express survivors trickled back to Howrah throughout Friday on any train they could catch, haunted by the nightmare on the tracks.

Blood-stained bandages bore them out amid a sea of anxious relatives on the platforms, as did the shock writ large on their faces.

“Around 1.25am, our coach (S7) started to lurch violently, accompanied by the clang of metal. Within seconds, before we could figure out that the train had been derailed, there was a collision that overturned the coach,” recounted Debasmita Majumdar, who was on her way to appear in an MSc entrance interview at Pune University.

“The lights went out. All of us who survived tried to feel our way to safety in pitch darkness,” said Md Habizul Gazi, who was in the same coach.

“I finally managed to escape through a broken window grille,” said the youth from Basirhat, who works as a driver in a Mumbai company.

“There were four children in our group. We are very lucky to have survived,” said Mufassal Mondal, also from Basirhat, moments after getting off a train in Howrah in the morning.

Poonam Trivedi, a resident of Mumbai in her 40s who was returning home from a relative’s place at Rampurhat in Birbhum, was in coach S2 with her son and daughter.

“No one from the railways reached the spot till 4am, by which time a relative of mine from Rampurhat had arrived by road,” she said.

After reaching Calcutta in a car, Poonam made her way to Howrah station in the afternoon to lodge a complaint against the lackadaisical approach of the railways. “They took down my complaint. Had they been prompt in reacting to the crisis lives could have been saved,” she said.

Senior railway officials were at Howrah station throughout the day. Around 10.15am, a special train left for the mishap spot with Railway Board chairman S.S. Khurana.

As gun-toting RPF men cordoned off a portion of a platform for his arrival, many a waiting relative commented that only the common man had to do without adequate protection.

Those who could not get in touch with their loved ones milled around the enquiry counters.

“My uncle Dilip Bhattacharya and aunt Shibani were in S5. Their cellphones are unreachable and I don’t know whether they are alive,” said Niladri Dey, a resident of Bhadreswar. He later took a train to Kharagpur.

Among the survivors, Paresh Sardar, Sujata Halder and Ramesh Santra were admitted to SSKM Hospital.

Mala Sen, 48, and her daughter Shreya, 22, were undergoing treatment at AMRI, Dhakuria. “The right hand of the girl had to be amputated,” said a hospital official.

Mala’s son Sourav, 20, was discharged from the hospital after treatment.

Bally-resident Saurabh Bhadra, 14, Nehal Mehta, 36, and five-year-old son Rishab from Mumbai and Bina Gupta, 40, of Swinhoe Lane in Ballygunge, were admitted to CMRI hospital. “The condition of Saurabh is critical,” said a hospital official.

Senior railway officials said many injured passengers of the Jnaneswari Express have been admitted to Midnapore State General Hospital, South Eastern Railway Hospital in Kharagpur and Kharagpur Government Hospital.