It is unfortunate when the hard-earned money of a well meaning, respected individual is stolen or robbed. Apart from the apparent loss of money and goods, a loss of safety and security also takes place with a robbery. One such unfortunate incident happened on 24th July with 25 year old Nishi who was travelling with her 52 year old father to Howrah (Kolkata) from Nagpur. The father daughter duo woke up dazed about 4 hours after the scheduled arrival of their train at Howrah junction, only to find themselves bereft of their cash and other valuables. The train too was parked 9 kms ahead of Howrah at Santragachi car shed. Panic-stricken calls from her relatives woke Nishi up, and upon taking stock of the situation they learned that her father’s gold chain weighing 50gm and two rings, one of them diamond-studded, all of which amounted to almost 3.5 lakhs, and an additional Rs. 8,000 cash were stolen. Facebook page and blog The Logical Indian (previously known as Arvind Kejriwal- The Next Prime Minister of India) covered this story and tried to highlight the cases of lapse of security which had occurred. It also tried to put the blame on Railway Minister for not taking any action in this case. The article published by The Logical India intrigued us and so we at tfipost.com decided to contact the railway authorities ourselves.
The facts which we received from the railways surprised us to a great extent, because the railways and its security forces had in fact done an exceptional job in this case.
According to the details received from the railway authorities, the father-daughter duo were shown photos of drug criminals who had been known to trap train travellers. They identified one previously accused drug criminal named Suvankar Chakroborty. The girl had earlier stated that a man sitting in the same compartment had indeed tried to get friendly with them during the course of the journey and had offered her water. Upon identification of the criminal, the victim duo were assisted to lodge an FIR at the Government Railway Police Station, Howrah. Case No-00/18(359) dated-26.07.18 U/S-328/379 IPC was registered by GRPS/HWH and will refer to SHO/Jharsugda as the point of jurisdiction. The RPF team which was formed to solve the case collected the passenger chart of the train and found that the berth number 19 was booked under the original name of the suspect with boarding at Nagpur. On closer scrutiny it was found that the ticket for berth no.19 was booked from Akola, Maharashtra, and the phone number and address was obtained from the same window. Dossiers from Andhra Pradesh Police, RPF Vijaywada and GRP/Howrah were collected as there were many criminal cases of similar nature already registered against the identified thief.
Using positioning and tracking devices the CAP, SDR and CDR of the mobile phone was obtained, which turned out to be fake as the person under whose name the mobile was registered was found to have no connections with the accused, as was confirmed by the CDR. The police also contacted all the co-passengers, TTE and coach attendants who confirmed that the accused had gotten off at Rourkela and his berth was re-allotted to a co-passenger. The accused had earlier been arrested on similar charges too, a habituated criminal he has good knowledge of drugs owing to him being a trained medical representative. He had also been arrested at the Kolkata airport in the past when he was returning after having committed a similar robbery. His home is known to the police team but he hardly visits his house. Policemen in plain clothes have been positioned by the RPF team Howrah around his house to nab him.
These revelations which we received from the railway authorities debunk the baseless claims made by The Logical Indian in their article. This shows that the railways have gone all out in their bid to catch the culprit and he will have to face the music, sooner or later. As far as the article by The Logical Indian is concerned, it remains to be seen which sources they had access to while writing the baseless article, if there were any. It looks like they took a story and twisted it just to suit their agenda of targeting the Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and the railways.