Govt proposes to nab stone pelters on camera

MUMBAI, MARCH 17: The state government has asked the administrations of Western and Central Railway to install video cameras on suburban ...

MUMBAI, MARCH 17: The state government has asked the administrations of Western and Central Railway to install video cameras on suburban trains to identify stone throwers. This was announced by minister of state for home rural Prabhakar More today in the Assembly. The minister said the government had asked for video cameras to be placed on the front and rear bogies of suburban trains.

The idea was first mooted by Police Commissioner Ronnie Mendonca at a meeting with state home minister Ramdas Kadam at the Mantralaya last week. But already both railway general managers have termed the idea as unfeasible due to the expense it will entail. Though after a meeting with state home minister Prabhakar More they told Express Newsline that they will certainly explore the possibility of implementing it.

At a conservative estimate the cost of two high-intensity cameras and a VCR on a rake to be at Rs 2 lakh, installing the equipment on all 173 rakes in the city could easily end up costing the railways overRs 2 crore.

8220;The crores that the government proposes to spend on the scheme could be better spent on providing the GRP with additional manpower or even building a 10-foot-high boundary wall near the railway tracks to deter stone throwers,8221; a senior GRP official said.

Last year the Government Railway Police GRP spent over Rs 60,000 before discarding the videography experiment. GRP stations along the western line at Mumbai Central, Bandra, Borivli and Dahisar, hired videographers at their own expense to shoot the length of the rail track and hutments in an effort to deter stone throwers.

Senior GRP officials maintain that pending the complete removal of hutments from the railway tracks, track patrolling and meetings with slum dwellers are the only ways of mitigating the problem. In three months alone this year, the GRP has conducted over 80 meetings with slumdwellers, appealing to them to nab stone throwers. Installing video cameras is one of the five steps mooted to stem stone pelting at the seriesof meetings with officials of the railways, railway protection force and government railway police. The other steps include installing grills on train windows, strict punitive measures against the culprits like booking them under the Maharashtra Prevention of Dangerous Activities Act and community fines on slums from where the stones have been pelted, increase in patrolling along railway tracks and imparting training to members of the voluntary organisations to deal with this problem.

More also announced in the Assembly that during 1998, a record number of 65 incidents of stone pelting were registered by the police, while from January to March 15, 1999, 22 offences have been registered. So far only nine arrests have been made.

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The minister has also announced forwarding a proposal to the Railway Ministry to give Samkaleen journalist Ramesh Dave Rs one lakh after he lost his eye when someone threw a stone at the train he was travelling in.