Railway Protection Force (RPF) officers of Mankhurd, Govandi and Chembur have comprised special teams of four officers each to catch miscreants attempting risky stunts on local trains.
Railway Protection Force (RPF) officers of Mankhurd, Govandi and Chembur have comprised special teams of four officers each to catch miscreants attempting risky stunts on local trains. Now, these activities have declined by 60 per cent since last month, officials said.
According to officials, Mankhurd, Govandi and Chembur are the main areas where several miscreants often attempt stunts on railway compartment footboards or on rooftops, owing to which several cases have been registered in the past few months.
Within the last two months there were four deaths after people travelling on the rooftop were severely burnt.
These teams work in close coordination. For example, if the Mankhurd police team fails to catch a particular accused, it informs the next station to lay a trap to arrest him. There are also two constables in the station manager’s cabin who monitor the closed-circuit television footage of the railway station and inform teams if they spot anything wrong.
Police inspector Mankhurd Ranjit Singh said, “It is really necessary to make people aware about the importance of their life. So we have kept four constables on each platform who keep an eye on every compartment of the train and if they find any person doing stunts unnecessarily, they grab him. If they could not do so on that platform, they click a photo on their smartphone and inform the officer on the next station about the compartment number and the person’s clothes so that they are identified and arrested.”
“Till now we have arrested 250 miscreants under various Acts. We have created and run many awareness campaigns, but people weren’t listening to us. Hence, we started taking strict action against them under these laws. Being strict is only option left and I think it’s working” said divisional security commissioner Sachin Bhalode.
