Anjana Halder has been battling cancer for the past 13 years. On Tuesday, she came face to face with another calamity, and emerged unscathed.

Anjana and her husband Shyamaprasad Halder, a fish trader from Hooghly, were on the Howrah-Mumbai Mail that jumped tracks in Jharkhand and killed two passengers.

Shyamaprasad recounted the harrowing experience of getting out of the tilted three-tier air-conditioned coach that had crashed against a concrete guard wall near the tracks, leaving a sliver of space for passengers to crawl out.

“The coach tilted and wedged against the wall, making it nearly impossible to open the door fully. We struggled for about five minutes to find a way out. I finally discovered a narrow gap between the coach and the wall and managed to crawl out onto the tracks. It felt like an eternity. I was particularly anxious for my wife, given her condition,” said Shyamaprasad, who has been making the trip to Mumbai for his wife’s treatment for the past 13 years.

“I can’t describe what I faced to get my wife out of the train in the dark. We were unharmed but anything could have happened. It was too risky to get off a coach that was leaning on a wall,” he said.

At least two people were killed and 30 injured after 18 coaches of the Mumbai-bound train from Howrah derailed near Barabambo railway station in Jharkhand around 3.45am on Tuesday. Shyamaprasad and his wife were in the B2 coach.

The accident comes a little over a month after the June 17 accident involving the Kanchenjunga Express and a goods train. Ten people were killed when the goods train rammed into the rear of the stationary Agartala-Sealdah Kanchenjunga Express near Rangapani station on the outskirts of Siliguri.

The 12810 Howrah-Mumbai Mail is one of the key trains in which thousands of cancer patients from Bengal and Jharkhand travel to Mumbai’s Tata Memorial Hospital.

“We travel to Mumbai for her (Anjana’s) treatment. The negligence of the railways that caused the derailment could have taken our lives,” said the 56-year-old trader, who has been travelling to Mumbai, mostly in the same train, ever since his wife was diagnosed with cancer in 2011.

He said many passengers like him had a close shave because a few coaches tilted onto a wall, fortunately allowing some space to crawl out ofthe train.

“I shudder to think what could have happened if the wall hadn’t been there. The number of casualties would have been much higher. Around 3.45am we woke up to a jolt and found thecoach tilted,” said Shyamaprasad, a fish wholesaler at Sija Bazar of Balagarhin Hooghly.

He said many passengers, including cancer patients and the elderly, got injured while jumping out of the derailed coaches.

“This train ferries hundreds of cancer patients to Mumbai regularly. It was painful to see some of them crawling to get off the derailed coaches. The railways should focus more on passengers’ safety than dream of introducing high-speed trains on such a shaky infrastructure,” Shyamaprasad said.

Though Shyamaprasad and Anjana were not injured, another elderly person, Nimai Pramanik from Hooghly’s Jirat who was travelling with his wife Rina, also a cancer patient, was badly injured when he jumped off the train in panic.

Achintya Das, son-in-law of the Pramaniks, said the elderly couple suffered multiple injuries and had to be admitted to Chakradharpur Railway Hospital.

“They travel to Mumbai every three months for the treatment of my mother-in-law. Her cancer treatment has to be postponed now because of the accident,” said Das, who was on his way to Chakradharpur when this reporter got in touch with him.

The railways arranged an alternative train from Chakradharpur station for passengers who were not injured. The Halders took the train that left Chakradharpur around 11.15am on Tuesday.

“Now we are crossing Raipur in Chhattisgarh and travelling in a three-tier AC coach. It is impossible to forget what we faced barely 12 hours ago,” Shyamaprasad said on Tuesday evening.

Asked what the railway was doing for injured passengers, Om Prakash Charan, chief public relations officer of South Eastern Railway, said: “We are taking care of their treatment at a railway hospital. As for those who were not injured, we have arranged a special train to their destination.”