All passengers who boarded the 4001 Up Samjhauta Express (Attari Special) on Sunday evening had to have valid passports and visas. At least four who reached Attari this morning were found to have been issued tickets without these documents. Two booking clerks at Old Delhi Railway station, Rakesh Kumar Maini and Surender, have been suspended and Railway staff are now wondering if there were more who got in without the mandatory checks.If that shows a security lapse, it’s not the only one. Trains are an easy target for terrorists and it is startling to see how Samjhauta Express, the key rail link between India and Pakistan and, therefore, one of the most vulnerable to attack, was seen as just another train requiring not one special security measure.Consider these:• The Old Delhi railway station has 23 Close Circuit Television Cameras, but Platform Number 18 from where the Samjhauta routinely departs, has none. Officials said several requests had been made but no one heard. • Of the 14 coaches, only four with 280 seats are reserved. All tickets are issued the day of departure, from 8 am to five minutes of departure. Physical checks of the passengers or their luggage before boarding are next to none and there is hardly any effort to sanitise the train before journey. • There were just six security personnel on duty on Sunday to check the 2,000 or so people — including those who had come to see their relatives off . Only two of the security men had hand-held metal detectors. There is no dog-squad at the station. Additional DCP (Railways) R K Jha said even these routine checks were not the responsibility of Government Railway Police (GRP). “We are entrusted only with maintaining law and order and checking crime at the railway station. Performing checks on the passengers is not our job,” he said. • It is not that there are no procedures to be followed, however. All passengers and those who have come to see them off, are supposed to pass through a Door Frame Metal Detector and then physically checked before boarding. But this rarely happens. • Most passengers carry luggage in excess of what is allowed. Even after paying an extra charge, a passenger is not allowed to carry more than 70 kg. But one railway official said passengers often carry 100 kg of luggage per person without the police raising any objection. • Towards its end, Platform 18 is accessible from all sides. There is no designated entry for passengers of this train. • In terms of maintenance too, there is no special treatment for this train. When in Delhi, the train is washed and routine maintenance drills carried out before being locked. It is put on the platform about two hours before departure and unlocked about 45 minutes before departure. On February 3 this year, the Old Delhi Railway Station’s Station Master received a letter warning that blasts and terrorist strikes would be carried out in trains at several other public places. Anoop Srivastava, DIG, Northern Railways accepts that there were grave lapses, “The system is old and lot of changes need to be made. We had intelligence inputs about possible disruptive activities.” — (with Aditya Kaul)
