25 June,2015 08:53 PM IST | | Shashank Rao
A woman ticket collector was manhandled on Thursday evening at GTB Nagar railway station by a female commuter and some men travelling with her
A woman ticket collector was manhandled on Thursday at GTB Nagar railway station by a female commuter and some men travelling with her.
The incident happened on Thursday evening when a group of women TCs during their routine rounds at GTB Nagar station asked the woman commuter for a valid ticket.
When the woman TC found the commuter travelling ticketless, she asked her to pay a fine. The situation escalated when the other men travelling along with the lady commuter started causing a ruckus. "The group of these miscreants started misbehaving. In fact, the women staff called up crying as they were feeling threatened," said a Central Railway official on condition of anonymity.
Three more staff members came on the spot as a huge group of people surrounded them. According to the officials, 10 railway staffer were gheraoed of which 7 were women. Finally, the Railway Police came to the rescue and caught two offenders even as the others ran away. "We have detained two people involved in the incident," said an official from Wadala GRP.
The offenders apparently also resorted to throwing stones at GTB Nagar, after which the security was tightened at the station. The officials claimed that there were other stray incidents of stones pelting at other nearby stations too which were brought under control. At present, the railway police has kept strict vigil at these railway stations.The other stone pelting incident occurred in between Reay Road and Cotton Green stations in which a woman suffered minor injuries. However, this incident has no connection with GTB Nagar incident.
The Central Railway has been coming down heavily on ticketless travellers by conducting intensive campaign against them. In May a total of 3.21 lakh cases of ticket less/irregular travel including unbooked luggage cases were detected, as against 2.50 lakh cases detected in May 2014. The amount realised in May this year is Rs 18.26 crores, as against Rs 13.29 crores during the corresponding month last year.
During the month, 577 cases of illegal transfer of reserved tickets were detected and an amount of Rs 4.31 lakh was realised as recovery. During the first two months of April and May a total of 6.42 lakh cases were detected and Rs 36.82 crores were realised from them as fine against Rs 24.32 crores from 4.64 lakh cases during corresponding period last year.
