NEW DELHI: A group of unidentified men attacked two Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel and decamped with an AK-47 rifle and 20 live rounds of bullets in the Ujjain district of Madhya Pradesh on Thursday morning. The incident happened at around 1.30 am on the Indore-Ujjain-Ratlam rail section when two RPF personnel, including assistant sub inspector (ASI) Kamlesh Sharma and head constable Rakesh Kushwah reached the tracks near Sunderabad village under Badnagar police station area, around 65 km from Ujjain district headquarters.
Owing to rising incidents of thefts of overhead wires (wire-line used to transmit electrical energy for running trains) on the rail section, the RPF had been on its toes. On receiving specific inputs about the possibility of criminals engaging in overhead wire theft, the RPF men rushed to the spot at around 1.10 am.
“They spotted five men near the railway tracks and asked them to stop. While four men fled the spot, one, identified as Bhagwan Singh, was caught by the railway police. As the RPF officers started grilling him, a group of around 12 to 15 men arrived at the scene and started pelting stones at them,” a senior police official in Ujjain said.
The two RPF men were surrounded by the stone pelting group, some of whom attacked the duo with sticks and rods. The officers slumped injurednear the tracks. The attackers managed to decamp with the AK-47 rifle and 20 live rounds of ammunition belonging to the head constable.