Central Railway ’s RPF gets 200 commandos

The Central Railway (CR) has got two companies of Railway Police Force (RPF) consisting of 200 new commandos for its Mumbai division, especially to be stationed at Chhatrapatti Shivaji Terminus (CST) where LeT-trained terrorist Ajmal Kasab and his co-conspirators had shot at commuters on November 26, 2008.

The 200 commandos join the force after six-months of training and will be adding to the CR’s current work force of 2,400 stationed only for the city of Mumbai. After the 26/11 attacks, baggage scanners were introduced in the CR and currently it has eight of them at vital stations such as CST, Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (LTT), Kalyan and around 14,000 CCTV cameras for suburban Mumbai, “The 200 commandos will be a big help to us to man the CST station which has so many entry and exit points, making us very vulnerable,” said an official on condition of anonymity.

The Western Railway (WR) on the other hand has finally got in their baggage scanners with four at Bandra and four at Mumbai Central stations. The WR has got repeated bomb threats in November, oddly sent by registered post with the most recent on the morning of November 18 at Bandra Terminus.

“The WR will get three dog squads in another three months. We have 990 CCTV cameras across our suburban section, including Dahanu,” said an RPF official. Both WR and CR have had RPF officials present in big numbers at all important stations since November first week ahead of the upcoming anniversary of the 26/11 attacks.