One more incident of cutting Railway signal wires in Kerala has come to light. In the recent incident that took place on last June 13, two persons, including a woman, have been arrested for trying to cut the Railway signal cable near Thalassery railway station in Kannur, Kerala.
They are identified as Chinna Ponnu from Villupuram and his friend Perumai from Salem. The initial investigation by railway protection force sources says it is not sabotage; they were stealing them to sell to the scrap dealers.
Railway Protection Force sources said that on June 13 at 12.30 PM, the signalling system went haywire when they tried to cut the signal wires. Then RPF, after investigation, found the persons behind the crime. After their arrest, they have been now sent to Judicial custody.
The Karamana police on April 18 this year arrested a Tamil Nadu native on the charge of stealing cable worth around Rs 1.5 lakh belonging to the Railways. The accused has been identified as Karthikeyan, hailing from Tenkasi, and currently staying on rent near Killippalam.
The Police also arrested Kanakaraj of Kottukal and 18-year-old youth Adinesh of Balaramapuram, the alleged accomplices of Karthikeyan, in carrying out the theft.
Earlier in 2021, on March 27, two technical employees of the Railway Signal Department were arrested for removing the signal wires to seek revenge on their higher official. Two employees of the Feroke station, Praveen Raj and Jineesh hailing from Kakkodi and Sultan Bathery, respectively were arrested by the RPF . They told the Police that they did it to take revenge against his senior who forced them to work. The two had detached the signal wires on the railway tracks in five places between Feroke and Vellayil stations.
In another incident in the same year, in April, two were held for placing the root of a coconut tree on track to sabotage the Chennai-Guruvayur Express. RPF nabbed two persons for placing the root of a coconut tree across the railway track in Kappil. Sajid (27) of Edava and Biju (30) of Kappil are the two arrested. The Chennai-Guruvayur Express train coming from Thiruvananthapuram to Kollam cracked the root of the tree.
On April 2 this year, three were killed, and eight passengers, including women, were injured when Shahrukh Saifi sprayed petrol at passengers in a moving train in Kerala’s Kozhikode and then ignited it.
The incident took place in the D1 bogey of the Executive Express going from Alappuzha to Kannur. After the fire happened at Kannur on the Executive train, again this type of incident happened which was seriously examining by Railway Police.
Two days after one of the worst train derailments in Odissa in which 289 passengers were dead, leaving several injuries, in Tamil Nadu, a major accident was averted by the timely action of a loco pilot, who stopped the train noticing a few unused tyres on the tracks in Lalgudi during the wee hours on June 4 2023. Railway authorities detected a crack at the base of a coach of the Kollam-Chennai Egmore Express in Tamil Nadu, prompting its immediate removal from the train to ensure passenger safety. The compromised S3 coach was promptly detached from the train.
RPF have found that on many occasions, big boulders, concrete slabs and even iron rods have found their way to the tracks, posing a major threat to the lives of passengers as these objects can cause a train to derail, especially if it is moving at high speed. In this connection, Police have arrested Prabhakaran, Karthik and Venkatesan from the same area.
The railways have to increase the safety measure by installing CCTVs on tracks on all vantage points besides increasing patrolling by RPF, railway gang men and home guards.
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