Title - Railways sounds red alert

Concerned over the safety of passengers, the Thiruvananthapuram Railway division declared a 72-hour red alert from Thursday afternoon.The declaration came in the wake of the presence of a bomb at Vellore, in the Ernakulam-Kottayam railway stretch on Thursday.“All the railway employees and officials of the Thiruvananthapuram division have been sensitised about the issue. Checks have been intensified at all the railway platforms and stations through out the division. Special squads have been appointed to track and scrutinise all the trains. Every train heading towards Kerala has been given the red signal. The RPF squad and the railway police are keeping vigil on the trains,” said a railway official. Almost all trains on Thursday were been delayed on account of the checks.“The members of the engineering section have been alerted to keep a vigil at all railway tracks so as to avoid any similar incidents,” he said. Meanwhile, the message has been passed on to all divisions of the Southern Railways. “The checks have been intensified,” said divisional railway manager Rajesh Agarwal, who refused to give the further details regarding the steps taken by the railways.“The railways are being made scapegoats in such incidents. We are doing our best. However, we have called the police and the investigating agencies to inform us regarding the breakthroughs.

The act is of a serious nature as it has been done by an outside agency. We request the investigating authorities to act stringently on this. We are willing to cooperate with them,” he said. Terming the case as the ‘rarest of the rare’ incidents, the railway officials said that it was the second bomb-related case that they have encountered in the past decades.

The first incident took place on December 6, 1997. “That was a pre-planned attack. Bombs burst simultaneously at Coimbatore, Trichy and Thrissur,” the official said.

Another scare was designed when a train that was stationed at Nilambur was sabotaged in July, 2010. “Hoax scares are quite common in the railways, even in the Thiruvananthapuram division. However, hoax threats have not been made in the Ernakulam-Kottayam route till now,” the railway officials added.