MUMBAI, February 19: The government railway police (GRP) is readying a unique supplementary force - by drawing volunteers from the ranks of hutment dwellers, shoe shine boys and railway porters to patrol railway tracks and platforms.This is in direct response to the bomb blasts on the Central and Western railway lines early on January 24, where saboteurs had attempted to collapse two electric poles onto the railway tracks and disrupt traffic."After the blasts, we began approaching hutment dwellers, shoe shine boys and porters to help us patrol tracks and railway platforms," said Special Inspector General GRP S V Suradkar.In meetings with groups of hutment dwellers, shoe shine boys, porters, cleaners, commuter organisations and beggars over the last fortnight, the GRP has been advising alertness. "Keep your eyes open for suspicious objects or persons moving suspiciously near railway tracks," Senior Inspector M S Rathod advises a motley group of half a dozen eager-eyed volunteers comprising cleanersand hutment dwellers.Rathod, whose Kurla police station guards 25 railway stations on the harbour and central lines, could use extra help. "We could have lakhs of policemen this way," he says.A typical volunteer scenario, this one's for a hutment dweller answering nature's call on the railway tracks: Inform the nearest policeman of any stranger walking towards the tracks in the morning without a pail of water.One of the volunteers, Jayraj Augustine, has been cleaning toilets at the Sion, Bhandup and Kurla stations for nearly a decade now."I've been asked to keep an eye for suspicious objects that could be placed by strangers in toilets," he says.Among the first to be briefed were dwellers of the Tagore nagar slum colony near Vikhroli, where the first blast took place. A bomb had been planted at the base of a pole near this hutment colony.Forensic investigations revealed that the bombs which used a gunpowder base were designed to blow up the 20-foot iron poles onto the rail tracks. Nobody wasinjured in the Vikhroli blast, while a motorman and gangman were injured when a bomb exploded near a Borivli-bound train at Goregaon. But the greater fallout of the blasts could have been mass panic and agitated crowds at railway stations, says IG Suradkar.To prevent a repeat of the January 24 blasts, the identification of volunteers is in full swing. "We have already formed people's committees called Railway Suraksha Samitis in Vikhroli and Kanjurmarg areas, we will be patrolling the tracks with their help," said DYSP Suresh Suryavanshi.But why slum dwellers? "Since they live near sensitive stretches of rail track, they could function as our eyes and ears and inform us of suspicious persons (read saboteurs)," he says. The GRP is now sending out plainclothes personnel from its Local Intelligence Branch to identify five volunteers from each slum colony. The volunteers are inducted after verifying their antecedents from hutment committees. The GRP is now contemplating issuing these volunteers special IDcards.
