Ratlam’s Rajdhani deja vu: Two train fires, same place in Madhya Pradesh

NEW DELHI: When the Rajdhani from Thiruvananthapuram to Delhi caught fire on the morning of May 17, the people of Ratlam in Madhya Pradesh may have said: “Again!”

They would have a good reason to do so.

On April 18, 2011, Ratlam was in the news for another Rajdhani fire. That train was chugging from Mumbai to Delhi. Around 2 am, a fire started in the pantry car that spread to three other compartments.

All 1,100 passengers were evacuated. The Rajdhani at that time was between Alot and Thuriya stations, in the Ratlam railway division. The Alot station, today called Vikramgarh Alot, serves Alot town in Madhya Pradesh. It is one of the tiny dots on the railway map that passengers cross on the Delhi-Mumbai line.

Cut to the morning of May 17, 2026, when around 5 am, another Rajdhani caught fire. The location was between Vikramgarh Alot and Luni Richha stations in the same railway division of Ratlam.

Mercifully, like in 2011, the blaze did not cause deaths. All 68 passengers could escape.

Unlike 2011, the damage was limited to one compartment that was quickly separated from the rake.

The Rajdhanis, once touted as the country’s finest trains, have caught fire at other times at other places.

On May 11, 2019, a fire broke out on a Bhubaneswar-bound Rajdhani near Balasore.

On April 22, 2015, six empty coaches of two Rajdhanis – one from Bhubaneswar and the other from Sealdah – caught fire in a railway yard in Delhi.

Ratlam, however, now has a rare, uncoveted place on the Rajdhani network map. It is where the trains caught fire twice.

There’s a positive, though. The toll was zero. Twice.