RailEnquiry

Based on a tip-off that the three accused in the murder of a 75-year-old woman were aboard the Thiruvananthapuram-Guwahati Express, the Railway police carried out combing operations on the train between the Kottayam and Palakkad stations on Sunday.Six people from Assam, who were bound for the north-east, were questioned. “The men were grilled because they bore a resemblance  to the description of the accused. However, we  let them off after registering their identity card numbers as there was little room for suspicion,” the officials said.The train was detained for intensified checking at the Ernakulam Town station for more than twenty minutes.The police were also directed to conduct a  search on the Thiruvananthapuram-Shalimar Express in the evening. Checks on all North-East bound trains were intensified by the Railway Police.Ernakulam Railway SI P Vinod said that the search began from Kottayam, after an alert from the Mallappally CI.“The RPF and ten other policemen were deployed to conduct a check aboard the train bound for Guwahati.When the train came to a halt, two police personnel  stood guard to ensure that no body jumped out,” Vinod said.He added that since the compartments carrying the migrant labourers were extremely cramped, a thorough check posed to be a problem."We could only question those we had access to,” he said.