Every morning college student Siddhi Sarangdhar squeezes herself onto a Mumbai train and hopes she will survive the journey to school on the world's busiest — and deadliest — rail network.

The death toll on Mumbai's railways averages a dozen a day — more than a whole year on New York's subway system, which has an average annual accidental death rate of eight.

"It's a big achievement getting on. Then standing is really difficult and getting off is another problem," said Sarangdhar.

Mumbai's rail system brings 6.5 million commuters into the city every day, six times the traffic of New York trains.

The result, railway officials say, is trains packed to 2.5 times capacity during rush hour — which here in India's financial capital is called "super dense crush load time".

Railway cars designed for 200 passengers are crammed with 500 at peak times. In the first four months of this year, 1146 commuters died and 1395 were injured, railway police said.

Many of the victims had been hanging on the side of the packed trains, unable even to wedge themselves inside, and fell to their deaths after losing their grip, they said.

Last year's total toll was 3997 deaths and 4307 injuries.

"We could enforce a limit on the number of people on a train but people still need to go to work. They'll sit on the tracks and stop trains from moving," Central Railways chief security commissioner BS Sidhu said.

"Overcrowding can be prevented only by very broad alterations to the system," he said.

$2-billion, part of it from a World Bank loan, have been earmarked to improve public transport in Mumbai, a city of 18 million, by 2015. But although authorities are working to increase the number of trains and their frequency, commuter figures appear to be growing at a faster pace.

"I've seen bodies lying in pieces unattended"

While a third of deaths are of passengers losing their grip on the side of the train, nearly half are people hit by trains as they stroll on the tracks.

"The number of preventable deaths should come down in the years to come. But unpreventable deaths are unpreventable," Sidhu said.

Unpreventable deaths — from the railway's view — include those passengers hit by trains when crossing tracks to get to another platform, illegal but not unusual.

Railway authorities have tried to combat the practice — by fining tens of thousands of lawbreakers, erecting fences and asking people to identify places where footbridges should be built.

Still, in Mumbai "nobody in their senses will walk one (extra) kilometre to cross a foot bridge and then walk one kilometre back," said Sidhu.

It was while strolling across the tracks at Borivali — Mumbai's second deadliest station — that Samir Zaveri lost his legs when he was 18. He fell in front of an approaching train and it sliced through his legs.

"It was my mistake, not the railway's," Zaveri (37) who has artificial legs, admits. Nevertheless, this year he decided to sue the railway for wasting crucial time when a passenger is injured.

India's infamous red tape

"Immediate treatment can save lives. Sometimes it takes two to three hours for the railways to deliver" an injured victim to a hospital, he said.

In 2003, a high court ordered railway stations to have ambulances standing by for accidents, but many do not and there are regular reports of injured passengers left beside the tracks while the trains continue rolling.

And then there is India's infamous red tape.

"The railways must get a stretcher, inspect the body and write a memo about the injury. Then an ambulance is requested. Much time is lost," explained TS Bhal, ex-superintendent of the Government Railway Police.

Bhal started a non-profit society four years ago to provide ambulances for railway victims after he saw an unconscious railway victim raise his hands after being left for dead on the platform for three days.

"I've seen bodies lying in pieces unattended," he said.

"The railway staff is not interested in providing transportation facilities to victims."

AFP