Towards the end of September 1947 the London Times reported: '4 million on the move in Northern India. Minorities in a state of panic.' month earlier, reports of the massacre of refugees fleeing by train were already common. Consider the Daily Mail correspondent, Ralph Izzard's account of his train journey from Karachi to Lahore on 22-3 August
1947.
Luckily the passengers on this journey escaped massacre, but their terror was palpable. At Montgomery in Punjab, Izzard saw what he called the 'first signs of trouble'. The platforms were 'packed with Hindu and Sikh refugees waiting despairingly for transport to India. Those on the platform had been there three days, while on the siding a special train, packed to the doors and on all roofs with non-Moslems, had been waiting for five days.' The Muslim engine-driver of the special train had refused to cross the border to Ferozepur for fear that he would not return alive. At Okara, Izzard continued: 'My train was rushed by 5000 panic-stricken Hindu and Sikh workers from the local Birla textile mills. 40 crammed themselves into my compartment meant to hold 6...' Beyond Raiwind, '... we met the vanguard of the Muslim refugees from India, each platform at Lahore being as crowded as previously they had been with non- Moslems, all as before with an utterly dazed... air'. A day or two earlier, the 15 Up from Delhi, a train with nine coaches and room enough, according to Izzard, for 'a thousand persons at least', had arrived in Lahore seven hours late with eight battered Muslim survivors on board.
Link to article: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~sj6/pandeychaptertwo.pdf