Title - South Western Railway booked for negligence

While the Pulakeshi Nagar police have booked a case of negligence against the railway authority following the death of a nine-year-old boy in a trench dug up adjacent the Banaswadi Railway station, railway authorities deferred stating it as a case of trespass.

Preliminary investigations by the police confirmed that a trench was dug up to store rain water for construction activities, and the authorities had not fenced the area, leading to the mishap.

According to an official press release from South Western Railway, the officials claimed that the Railway land near Banasawadi station is fenced off by a compound wall on all four sides. Inside the compound wall, a seven-foot-deep Ground Level Reservoir (GLR) was under construction for augmenting the supply of water at Railway Station and the adjoining railway quarters. Further, the officials blamed the boys for trespassing, stating that the three boys jumped the boundary wall and went to the GLR construction site for swimming, which can be proved by the fact that the boys’ clothes were outside the construction site.

“This is a clear case of trespass, and since the railway premises is covered by a boundary wall on all four sides there was no need for extra protection for the GLR,” the release said.

“Railway land is being misused for all sorts of activities. Roads are built by people, boundary walls are broken, garbage is dumped and illegal constructions taken up, preventing railway staff from doing their duties,” the release said. The officials demanded that the police file an FIR against all those trespass on railway land.

However, the Pulakeshinagar police said it was clear that it was negligence of railway authorities, who left the trench without covering it properly, which led to the incident. “We have booked a case of negligence and are investigating the matter,” the police said.