Night Duty, Extra Off: 3 Rail Staffers, Arrested For Track Tampering In Gujarat, Reveal Reason Behind Act

Surat News: Three railway employees in Gujarat were arrested for staging a sabotage attempt to gain recognition and secure continued night duty.

Surat News: Three railway employees in Gujarat's Surat district were arrested on Monday for allegedly tampering with railway tracks and subsequently alerting authorities about a sabotage attempt in a bid to gain recognition for averting a potential disaster. The motive behind their actions, as revealed by the police, was to secure praise and continue being assigned to night duty, allowing them to spend more time with their families during the day. 

The accused have been identified as Subhash Poddar (39), Manish Mistry (28), and Shubham Jaiswal (26), all of whom are trackmen in the railways' maintenance department. Superintendent of Police Hotesh Joysar stated that the trio alerted the railway administration at 5:30 am on Saturday about miscreants who had removed elastic clips and two fishplates from one set of tracks and relocated them to another in a deliberate attempt to derail a train, news agency PTI reported.

A probe was initiated following the registration of a case for criminal conspiracy under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita at the Kim police station against unidentified individuals. "We found that the trio, while on night patrol, had sent a video of the compromised track to their seniors in order to alert them," Joysar explained.

Surat Police Crack Arrested Railway Staffers' Plot

According to railway officials, a train had passed through the route just prior to the discovery of the tampering. The Superintendent of Police added, "The time interval between the tampering being discovered and the passing of the train was too brief, making it implausible for the clips and plates to have been removed within such a short period."

Upon examining the mobile phones of the accused, investigators uncovered videos of the tampered tracks taken at various times between 2:56 am and 4:57 am. Mistry was found to have deleted photos he had taken of the tampering. "This established that the photos and videos were captured well before they reported the sabotage around 5:30 am," Joysar stated, adding that all three confessed to their actions after rigorous questioning.

The police stated that the motivation behind their misconduct was the desire for recognition and continued being assigned to night duty. "It was Poddar who came up with this idea because their night duty for the monsoon season was about to conclude," Joysar noted.

For each night duty, the staffers would get an off the following day and wanted this perk to continue, the official informed.