Following attempts to sabotage Duranto Express by putting railway sleepers on the tracks between Thaparnagar and Kalubathan railway stations in Dhanbad on Monday, the GRP as well as the State Police have been alerted to increase the surveillance on and around the tracks to avoid such incidents in future. A coordination meeting was also held at Police Headquarters here between ADG (Rail) and Railway officials to chalk out a strategy to check such incidents.
“Since, it is a law and order problem, we have already alerted the GRP and the State Police with a direction to increase surveillance and inform the rail authorities immediately if something suspicious is spotted near the railway tracks,” said ADG (Rail) Prashant Singh. Besides, there is an army of Gangmen with the Railways, who keeps a close eye even on minute abnormalities on the tracks, he added.
The Railway officials also asserted that regular checking of tracks is done by the gangmen round the clock to avoid any such incident which is also monitored by the senior officials.
“Such things could be checked only through regular patrolling on tracks. If we are informed about it beforehand, accidents could definitely be avoided,” said Senior Deputy Commercial Manager, Rail Division, Neeraj Kumar. In case, we get very strong inputs in this regard, passenger trains may be asked to follow a goods train or an engine so that minimum damage is caused to the passengers, Kumar added.
Meanwhile, keeping Republic Day in mind, regular checking of passengers at the stations are being done by the RPF personnel using sniffer dogs.
“Continuous monitoring is being done through CCTV cameras on some of the stations while on board staffs have also been directed to immediately inform the security forces present there if they spot anything unusual in the trains,” said Kumar.
Remarkably, a sleeper had been put by someone on the railway tracks between Thaparnagar and Kalubathan stations when Delhi bound Duranto Express was about to reach there. The train was at the speed of 110 km per hour when the engine ran over the sleeper causing a strong sound and leaving some of the bogies uncontrolled with sparks coming out of it. The driver somehow controlled and stopped the train and informed the control room, following which it was pulled by another engine brought from Dhanbad. No one was injured in the incident.