3 Rail Employees Arrested in Surat for Staging ‘Sabotage’ Plot To Get Felicitated

Surat: Three railway employees were arrested by police in Gujarat’s Surat district on Monday for allegedly staging an alleged fake ‘sabotage” attempt and then alerting officials to take credit and get felicitated for averting a possible train accident.

The three arrested persons identified as Subhash Poddar (39), Manish Mistry (28) and Shubham Jaiswal (26) are trackmen in the railways’ maintenance department.

Investigation has revealed that the arrested persons resorted to this act to get themselves felicitated.

On September 21, there were reports that some unidentified persons allegedly tampered with a railway track by removing fish plates and loosening several bolts to derail trains.

The arrested trio had alerted the officials regarding it at 5.30 am on September 21 regarding it. They had informed that during inspection between Kosamba and Kim station they had found that “miscreants” had removed elastic clips and two fishplates from one set of tracks and had placed them on another track to derail a train.

According to the police, the accused, who were on night duty, also sent a video of the compromised truck to their seniors.

Police during investigation found that a train had passed on the route just before the tampering was discovered.

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.

When police officials checked the mobile phones of the trio, it was discovered that the videos of tampered tracks were shot between 2:56 am to 4:57 am.

The police became suspicious over it and the three trackmen were grilled by the police. During interrogation, they confessed to the crime. They added that they resorted to such an act to get felicitated and be deployed on night duty further, which would give them time to spend with the family during the day.

For each night duty session, they would get a day off the following day, and wanted the process to continue.

The accused were booked under the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita (BNS) and the Railway Act.