The passengers travelling by train No 12611 Chennai Central-H Nizamuddin Garib Rath Express had a narrow escape on Saturday morning. lives of hundreds of passengers were saved from a possible mishap when the vigilante team of the railway gangmen noticed a crack on the track near Chennai which had the potential to derail the train.
“The crack was noticed near Ponneri station, 33 km from the Chennai Central Station by the Railway inspection team who were on routine patrol duty. They immediately alerted the control room and all other safety wings,” said Boopathy, chief public relations officer, southern Railway. The 12611 Garib Rath had left Chennai Central by that time and had picked up speed. “But the gangmen got the train stopped one km off the spot where the crack was noticed. We pressed the emergency team into action and replaced the tracks within one hour. The train got delayed by one hour,” said Boopathy.
He said there was nothing unusual in the incident. “Our inspection wings, which always monitor tracks, have detected cracks like this in the past too. This got noticed because the train was stopped immediately after leaving the Chennai Central station,” he said. The suburban rail services between Chennai Central and Ponneri got delayed by 70 minutes.
But the incident brought back memories of a blast in 12509 Bangalore-Chennai-Guwahati Express which took place at Chennai Central on May 1, 2014. A 24-year-old software engineer P Swathi from Guntur in Andhra Pradesh was killed and 14 others injured when two bombs exploded in the train immediately after it pulled into the station at 7.15 in the morning. Swathi, who was working in Bangalore was on her way to her home town to finalise her wedding plans with her college mate when tragedy struck in the forma of a bomb blast.
The investigation team is yet to arrest anybody in connection with the blast though the police have found that the perpetrators of the blast were activists of the dreaded Students Islamic Movement of India, an outfit banned in India. Saturday being the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin laden, founder of al Qaeda, security had been beefed around vantage points in Tamil Nadu. It was on May 2, 2011 bin laden was killed in Abbottabad in Pakistan by an operation carried out by the Special Operations Command of the US Navy.