Amid the nationwide rise in instances of train derailment, three railway employees were arrested in Gujarat's Surat district on Monday for allegedly tampering with track and then alerting authorities about a "sabotage attempt". They did it to take credit for averting a possible tragedy, a police official said.
The accused have been identified as Subhash Poddar (39), Manish Mistry (28) and Shubham Jaiswal (26). Superintendent of Police Hotesh Joysar said that all three work as trackmen in the railways' maintenance department.
On Saturday, Poddar and others were on inspection between Kosamba and Kim stations. At 5:30 am, they had alerted the railway administration about "miscreants" removing elastic clips and two fishplates from one set of tracks and placing them on another to derail a train. The alert turned out to be a made-up story.
SP said, "A probe began after a case for criminal conspiracy was registered under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita at Kim police station against unidentified persons. We found that the trio, while on night patrol, had sent a video of the compromised track to their seniors in order to alert them. Railway officials told us a train passed on the route just before the trio noticed the tampering."
SP said that the time period between the passing of the train and the discovery of tampering was too less to remove clips and plates. "The time interval of the tampering being discovered and the passing of the train was too less and it was not possible to remove the clips and plates in such a short time. We checked the mobile phones of the trio and found videos of tampered tracks shot at different intervals starting from 2:56 am to 4:57 am. Mistry had also deleted photos he had taken," SP added.
SP Joysor concluded that the photos and videos were taken much before they called the officials at around 5:30 am to report sabotage, adding the three confessed to the act after intense questioning.
"They indulged in this act to ensure they would be felicitated and be deployed on night duty further, which would give them time to spend with the family during the day. It was Poddar who came up with this idea because their night duty for the monsoon was about to come to an end," the SP said. He said the trio, for each night duty session, would get an off the following day and they wanted this process to continue, he added.
