Platform number four at the Sainthia station and the morgue at Suri hospital had become Shankar Shah’s home since the past 48 hours. Shah who had come all the way from Asansol is hoping against hope to not find his cousin —- Lalan Sau — a jawan of Jharkhand armed police among the dead. The time however of Lalan’s remaining missing is only making Shah more tensed.

When above 100 injured people were brought to the Suri Sadar Hospital from the accident site at Sainthia, there was a severe shortage of blood in the small-town hospital. When this news was telecast, political parties and NGO came out on the streets making appeals to the people to donate blood. As a result, large number of ordinary people, specially youth, thronged the hospital to donate blood.