Five Shiv Sainiks hold up Konkan Railway for hours, police watch `helplessly’

SINDHUDURG, AUG 11: Five saffron flag-waving Shiv Sainiks held up the Mumbai CST-Madgaon bound Konkan Kanya Express for over five hours at...

SINDHUDURG, AUG 11: Five saffron flag-waving Shiv Sainiks held up the Mumbai CST-Madgaon bound Konkan Kanya Express for over five hours at Sindhudurg, some 110 from Sawantwadi on the Maharashtra-Goa border. All this under the eyes of a posse of 20 state policemen, who didn’t make the slightest attempt to evict them. The incident had a cascading effect on the single-line Konkan Railway, throwing schedules of several of its long distance trains haywire.

The 0111 Konkan Kanya, already running over an hour late due to heavy rains, passed the Vaibhavwadi railway station at around 10 am this morning. It reached a manned railway-crossing a few minutes later where it was stopped by a small group of Sainiks. They were demanding that the Konkan Railway halt its trains at the Vaibhavwadi station.

Over 1000 passengers were stranded at the level-crossing without food and water for four hours, even as representatives of the Sena held talks with the railway authorities at the Vaibhavwadi railway station, two kilometres away.

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Repeated requests to the police to evict the squatters fell on deaf ears. “We can’t do anything. Talks are going on to resolve the matter,” said sub-inspector Dilip Salunke, ducking jibes from passengers, who asked him if he was a part of the agitation.

A few hours later, crowds of villagers at the railway-crossing grew and abused and threatened passengers who had alighted from the train. “Do you want violence, we can call hundreds of people from nearby villages. What will you do?” they shouted at the passengers standing in the pouring rain.

The driver of this 17-coach train told The Indian Express that it was the duty of the police to arrest and remove the protestors. “It was only meant to be a symbolic protest for a few minutes, but I fail to understand why the police didn’t remove them,” he said. The police, instead, quickly drove passengers back into the train and prevented the rest from alighting from the train.

Passengers were indignant. “How can such a small group of people hold over a thousand people hostage?” asked Ajit Murickan. What further infuriated them was the casual attitude of the policemen who stood by the Sainiks. A police constable privately admitted that the police also endorsed the demand for a halt at the station. It was the passengers who had to bear the brunt of this demand. “When the law-enforcing authorities also join in agitations there is nothing we can do about it,” shrugged JD Sanglani, another passenger.

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“We have made a demand for halting a train here for over two years now, but our pleas have fallen on deaf ears,” said local Sena leader Satish Sawant. The train was allowed to leave only at around 3.30 pm, after they had received a written assurance from railway authorities that trains would halt at Vaibhavwadi.