An Indian tea vendor caught on film taking water from a train toilet before selling his drinks to passengers has been fined as concerns grow in the country over food safety. The vendor on the Chennai-Hyderabad Express was caught after footage of him and two others coming out of a toilet with large cans used to serve tea and coffee on trains was widely shared. Indian Railways said in a statement that the “incident has been inquired into in detail” and that the tea seller had been fined the equivalent of £1,100. The video was made on a train at Secunderabad in Telangana state. Only one of the three vendors was licensed. The vendor claimed the group were transferring milk from one can to another and did not want to do it in the open. “The very fact that tea/coffee cans were seen being brought out of the toilet is in itself a wrong practice,” the railway company said. A series of recent incidents have put the spotlight on food safety in India. In the eastern city of Kolkata, famed for its Bengal delicacies, police this week unearthed a racket in which tonnes of rotten meat from dumps was being sold to restaurants. Sales of meat and poultry in the city have plummeted since authorities seized about 20 tonnes of rotten meat. Police suspect a lot more had been sent out to city restaurants. “The meat was sourced from dump yards where vultures and dogs fight over carcasses in the fringes of the city,” Koteshwar Rao, a senior West Bengal police officer said. Eight people have been arrested so far, but Kolkata restaurants and cafes have been left reeling from the scandal. “The rumours have resulted in a 50% fall in demand [for meat] across restaurants and eateries,” Taher Ali, a member of the Meat Merchants Association said. The Hotel and Restaurant Association of Eastern India has told its members to only purchase meat from registered suppliers. According to government figures, food poisoning is one of the most common diseases in India, accounting for 242 of 1,469 serious outbreaks reported last year. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/03/indian-tea-seller-caught-using-water-from-train-toilet
India is facing huge number of social crisis including rapes, murders, robberies, and other street crimes. This is really a bad news for me as India is a well recognized country in the world. Such an unhygienic crime would be condemned on every forum. A disappointing news!
Here is India....bloody amazing place.... https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/t...dia-festival-dozens-dead-20181020-p50avc.html
Asia At least 50 people are killed, hundreds trapped in India passenger train derailment June 2, 2023 By The Associated Press Rescuers work at the site of passenger trains that derailed in Balasore district, in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, on Friday. Press Trust of India via AP NEW DELHI — Two passenger trains derailed Friday in India, killing at least 50 people and trapping hundreds of others inside more than a dozen damaged rail cars, officials said. About 400 people were taken to hospitals after the accident, which happened in eastern India, about 220 kilometers (137 miles) southwest of Kolkata, officials said. The cause was under investigation. Ten to 12 coaches of one train derailed, and debris from some of the mangled coaches fell onto a nearby track, said Amitabh Sharma, a railroad ministry spokesperson. The debris was hit by another passenger train coming from the opposite direction, and up to three coaches of the second train also derailed, Sharma said. The Press Trust of India news agency reported that a third train carrying freight was also involved, but there was no immediate confirmation from railroad authorities. In the aftermath, television images showed rescuers climbing atop the wreckage to break open doors and windows and using cutting torches to free survivors. Passengers describe the scene Passenger Vandana Kaleda told the New Delhi Television news channel that she "found people falling on each other" as her coach shook violently and veered off the tracks. She said she was lucky to survive. Another survivor who did not give his name said he was sleeping when the impact woke him up. He said he saw other passengers with broken limbs and disfigured faces. Dattatraya Bhausaheb Shinde, the top administrator in the Balasore district, said at least 50 people were dead. The Press Trust reported a death toll of at least 70. Nearly 500 police officers and rescue workers with 75 ambulances and buses responded to the scene, said Pradeep Jena, the top bureaucrat of the Odisha state. Rescuers were attempting to free 200 people feared trapped in the wreckage, Shinde said. The Press Trust said the derailed Coromandel Express was traveling from Howrah in West Bengal state to Chennai, the capital of southern Tamil Nadu state. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his thoughts were with the bereaved families. "May the injured recover soon," tweeted Modi, who said he had spoken to the railway minister and that "all possible assistance" was being offered. Despite government efforts to improve rail safety, several hundred accidents occur every year on India's railways, the largest train network under one management in the world. In August 1995, two trains collided near New Delhi, killing 358 people in the worst train accident in India's history. Most train accidents are blamed on human error or outdated signaling equipment. More than 12 million people ride 14,000 trains across India every day, traveling on 64,000 kilometers (40,000 miles) of track.
Oooohhhh lookee again.... Train collision kills at least eight in eastern India, police say By Rhea Mogul and Esha Mitra, CNN Mon June 17, 2024 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/17/...rash-kanchanjunga-express-intl-hnk/index.html People gather at the site of a train collision in Nirmaljote, in India's West Bangal state, on June 17. Diptendu Dutta/AFP/Getty Images CNN — At least eight people were killed and dozens of others injured after a cargo train collided with a passenger train in eastern India on Monday, according to authorities, as a top official ordered a major emergency response. The Kanchenjunga Express, which runs between the city of Kolkata and Silchar in northeastern Assam state, was struck by a freight train south of the city of Siliguri, according to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Disaster teams have rushed to the crash location, which lies below the foothills that lead to Darjeeling, a popular mountain tourist destination famous for its tea plantations and stunning Himalayan views. Local media pictures and video footage from the scene showed at least one train car on its side, parts of it crushed into a mass of twisted metal. Another car can be seen rising into the air at a steep angle above an engine carriage. Northeast Frontier Railway spokesperson Sabyasachi De told CNN at least eight people were killed in the crash. A total of 52 patients have been admitted to the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital, of which nine are in “very serious” condition, the facility’s superintendent Sanjay Mallick told CNN. Others have minor fractures, he said. Banerjee, the local chief minister, wrote on X that “doctors, ambulances and disaster teams have been rushed to the site for rescue, recovery, medical assistance.” People gather around the wreckage of a train after a collision in West Bengal, India on June 17, 2024. ANI/Reuters Live images from the site of the crash streamed live by local news channel TV 9 showed people gathered outside the carriages, some filming on their phones. The crash comes more than a year after India experienced one of the worst train disasters in the country’s history, when more than 280 people were killed in a three-way collision involving two passenger trains and a freight train in eastern Odisha state. That incident shocked the nation, renewing calls for authorities to confront safety issues in a railway system that transports more than 13 million passengers every day. India’s extensive rail network, one of the largest in the world, was built more than 160 years ago under British colonial rule. Today, it runs about 11,000 trains every day over 67,000 miles of tracks in the world’s most populous nation. But decaying infrastructure is often cited as a cause for traffic delays and numerous train accidents. Though government statistics show that accidents and derailments have been on the decline in recent years, they are still tragically common. More than 16,000 people were killed in nearly 18,000 railway accidents across the country in 2021, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. Most railway accidents were due to falls from trains and collisions between trains and people on the track. Train-on-train collisions are less common. On Monday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the West Bengal crash “saddening” and sent a message of condolence to the affected families. “I pray that the injured recover at the earliest. Spoke to officials and took stock of the situation. Rescue operations are underway to assist the affected,” Modi wrote on X. Upgrading India’s transportation infrastructure is a key priority for Modi in his push to create a $5 trillion economy by 2025. His government last year raised capital spending on airports, road and highway construction and other infrastructure projects to $122 billion, or 1.7% of its GDP. A significant portion of that spending is targeted at introducing more high-speed trains to India’s notoriously slow railways.