JANUARY 20: A four hundred tonne suburban local hurtling at over 60 kilometres an hour, a hasty trespasser who prefers bounding over the tracks to using the foot over bridge, the sickening sound that accompanies a dismembered body, and Mumbai's rails have notched up yet another statistic.Every day, nearly half a dozen people are killed or maimed in the path of a speeding train while running across rail tracks. Between July and December last year, the Western Railway (WR) recorded 252 cases of trespassers being maimed or killed, while the Central Railway recorded 387 cases between April and November.``It's like playing Russian Roulette. People seem to take their chances on the tracks rather than face the slight inconvenience of taking a foot over bridge,'' remarks CR CPRO Mukul Marwah. Authorities estimate that each such accident delays at least a dozen trains, while inconveniencing at least 50,000 commuters. The effects of a single such incident reverberate down the line. Railway procedures insist thatmotormen get off trains, inform railway police, make out a panchnama and clear the body. Following the rules, though, also ensures that the train is held up for at least half an hour, which triggers off a cascading effect with trains being held up right down the line.``About a third of train timings are lost to people killed on rail tracks,'' says WR CPRO Ravindra Tandon, who adds that WR could run its services one and a half per cent better than its current 96 per cent efficiency if such incidents were avoided.Hot spots which record the maximum number of rail kills include Wadala, Kalyan, Thane, Bandra, Dadar and Kurla (see graphic). And a major cause of rail kills are the bustling hutments, shops and all, thriving bang alongside the tracks.Then there's the human toll. Motormen who not only have to watch helplessly as trespassers are run over but even retrieve dismemebered bodies and wailing victims, suffer high blood pressure and emotional strain. Senior motorman V K Sonawane couldn't eat after he saw the contents of a victim's tiffin box spilt over the tracks. He wonders why motormen in India can't be given a week off to help them recover from the trauma, like their counterparts in the London Metro. And motorman V L Limaye shudders as he remembered the smell of a trespasser's burning flesh, seared on the red-hot train wheels.``We feel guilty and tense,'' he says. ``Since everyone in the city is so busy, they're always on the look out for short cuts,'' says 47-year-old motorman Jayant Nimsudkar. Motormen have to rely only on the train's shrill whistle connected to a foot pedal and a hand-controlled vacuum brake to prevent mishaps. Both are futile when trespassers sometimes choose to ignore the whistle and the train's braking distance of around 400-metres, which makes it a toss between death and grievous injury. A bulk of the rail kills are suicides. ``While a majority of school students cross the tracks morning and evening, we have to be extra cautious during the exam period,'' reveals motorman S H Ayubi.So what are the railways doing about it? ``While trespassing is an offence under the Indian Railway Act, it is the kind of infringement where strong-arm methods cannot be used, as lakhs of people do it every day,'' says Marwah. He points out that it would be impossible for the railways to police a 120-km stretch of rail track. Changing people's attitudes is the only solution, he says.
