About 83 Bodies Remain Unidentified 4 Days After Indian Rail Crash

Dilip Kumar Sabar stands near a coffin with the body of his deceased brother-in-law Jyotilal Sabar, in the aftermath of a train collision in Balasore, at a hospital in Bhubaneswar in the eastern state of Odisha, India, on June 5, 2023. Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters

BALASORE, India—Indian authorities made fervent appeals to families on Tuesday to help identify 83 unclaimed bodies kept in hospitals and mortuaries after the death toll in the country’s deadliest rail crash in over two decades rose to 288.

The disaster struck on Friday, when a passenger train hit a stationary freight train, jumped the tracks and hit another passenger train passing in the opposite direction near the district of Balasore in the eastern state of Odisha.