Odisha train crash: The business park housing the dead in Balasore

Three days after India's most horrific train accident killed over 275 people, desperate families continue to search for their loved ones. The BBC's Vineet Khare reports from a business park in Odisha state's Balasore district, where bodies are being kept after morgues ran out of space.

On an ordinary day, the NOCCi Business Park - which houses big offices, an open air theatre and several other amenities - is teeming with visitors who come to work here.

But on Sunday, the sprawling 10-acre property, located on the outskirts of Balasore, wore a deserted look. The only visitors that day were the family members of the victims of the train crash, who came in search of their loved ones.

An official present at the site told the BBC that over 150 bodies have been moved to the business centre since the accident on Friday evening. The place has also been providing information about some of the missing persons.

Outside, we met a tearful Seema Choudhary from West Bengal state's Malda town.

She had been unable to find her husband, Deepankar, for hours and was fast losing hope.

"I have been to the hospital, I have checked the bodies, but I am unable to find him," she said sobbing.

She said she would check hospitals in the state capital of Bhubaneswar where many of the dead have been moved.

Kanchan Choudhary, who is from the same town, stood close by. She too had gone to multiple hospitals looking for her husband.

"But I could not find him," she says.

Local officials say they are doing everything possible to help the families find their loved ones, but the process has been chaotic given the scale of the disaster.

At the business park, a glass door leads into a huge hall that has been partitioned into two.

On one side, a big black plastic sheet is spread on the floor on which lay a dozens of bodies. The sheet is covered in pools of melted water, it's from the massive amounts of ice that had been put to slow the decomposition of bodies.

A damaged mobile, some clothes, a tobacco box, and a wallet - possibly belonging to the victims - are strewn around the bodies.

On the other side of the divide, a projector runs pictures of the dead on a screen to help families identify the relatives.

Many stood silently, their eyes transfixed on the changing slides of the pictures.

Nearby, more pictures of the dead had been laid on tables - they belonged to those who were moved from the business park to nearby hospitals.

A resident of Balasore told the BBC that the hall is airconditioned and large enough to house the number of dead.

But officials say they are worried the place might not be able to hold the bodies for longer.

The temperatures in Balasore are high and it is challenging to preserve the bodies in the intense heat with limited freezing facilities. A lot of families are also coming from far away places - and sometimes from different states - which is taking longer to identify the bodies.

"For these reasons it is getting difficult to keep the dead safe for long," district official Nirlipta Mohanty told the BBC.

She added that they were now trying to send the bodies to Bhubaneswar city, which has big hospitals and other facilities.

Ms Mohanty says they are doing everything possible to help the families. But that hasn't been enough for people like Sumit Kumar, who had been looking for his relative Neeraj since the previous evening.

"I managed to spot his picture among those of the dead, but I haven't been able to find him," Mr Kumar says.

Uday Kumar, a social worker helping at the business park, says the administration should set up help desks near railway and bus stations, instead of setting them up in far off places.

Other workers at the site say they are exhausted and shocked at the scale of destruction.

"I feel terrible. I have been working since 8pm last night," said municipal worker Subrat Mukhi who along with colleagues had been working non-stop since Saturday, helping families place bodies in vehicles and ambulances to ferry them home or to the hospital.

"Sometimes I start to cry when I see them. I think how I would feel the same way if I had lost someone," he said.

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