It was supposed to be just another journey for the Delhi-Attari special express. The train runs non-stop from Delhi to Attari where passengers are shifted to the Samjhauta Express, which goes to Lahore after Customs and Immigration clearances.
Around midnight, two explosions rocked the bi-weekly train near Panipat.
"There was a sudden ball of fire in the train as it moved at normal speed with most passengers asleep," recounts Zubaida, a Saharanpur (Uttar Pradesh) resident.
Zubaida, who was going to Karachi in Pakistan, said that around midnight, she heard passengers raise an alarm.
"Initially, I and other passengers failed to understand as to what had happened," she told PTI at the Ambala railway station where the train made an emergency halt.
Zubaida, who was travelling in the three-tier sleeper bogie adjacent to the one, which was burnt said, "When, I and the other passengers looked outside the train, we found that the bogies behind ours were ablaze. Immediately, there was panic among the passengers who started running for safety. There was total chaos in the train."
"I fell down as the passengers were in a hurry to run to safety to other bogies. In the process, I injured my leg," Zubaida, who is continuing her journey to Karachi, added.
Another passenger -- Aziz Ahmed, a resident of Delhi headed for Rawalpindi -- injured his hand in the commotion that followed the blasts.
"I was travelling in the general bogie when the fire broke out," he said.
Immediately after seeing fire emanate from two coaches of the train, passengers pulled the emergency chain. He said that two of his co-passengers jumped from the running train.
While five bogies of the train, including two badly burnt ones, have been kept at Diwana, the rest 11 bogies left the Ambala cantonment railway station after a thorough check up.
Some of the injured were given first aid by railway doctors and a medical relief train was rushed to Diwana from Ambala, a railway spokesman said.
