The railway police have apprehended and fined over 200 train bullies in less than two weeks after plain clothed officers secretly filmed them preventing people from boarding trains between Borivali and Virar.
The drive that was launched on February 22 in the backdrop of two commuters being beaten up by such bullies has fetched Western Railway Rs 75,000 in fines.
A senior TV journalist was beaten up by a group of commuters on February 21 when he tried to board an Andheri-bound train at Mira Road. A day later, another commuter, identified as...
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Avadhesh Kumar, was beaten up at Borivali in a Churchgate-bound train.
Before launching the drive, the Railway Police Force (RPF) had to grapple with a problem – in the past, every time they had tried to apprehend train bullies, one of them would pull the emergency chain bringing the train to a halt. This would not only delay that particular train, but have cascading effect on several other trains.
The RPF overcame this problem by forming multiple vigilance teams for each train. While one set of officers in plain clothes and armed with secret cameras would board trains to keep an eye on the bullies, the other set would be deployed at stations.
Once a team captured train bullies in action in their cameras, they would transmit the images to their colleagues waiting at the train’s next stop.
The officers at the station, in RPF uniform, would then board the train at its next halt and apprehend the accused, giving them no time pull the emergency chain.
The drive is being conducted between Borivali and Virar because this stretch is infamous for incidents of train bullying. In Virar-bound trains, commuters headed to Virar do not allow anybody to get off or board at Andheri, Borivali, Dahisar, and Mira Road. They believe these commuters should not crowd Virar trains as there are enough number of trains servicing Andheri and Borivali.
A senior RPF officer explained that the secret cameras have been of great help as they provide irrefutable evidence against the guilty. In the past ten days or so, 84 cases of bullying were registered at Borivali, followed by 56 at Virar, 46 at Bhayander, and 14 at Vasai Road.
Western Railway’s Senior Divisional Security Commissioner Anup Shukla said the drive will continue for as long as it takes to root out the menace of bullying. “It is very difficult to nab these bullies as they resort to chain pulling. But with the help of decoy teams we have managed to catch the culprits without affecting the train services,” he said.