BENGALURU: Over 100 Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel and 65 Government Railway Police (GRP) staffers suddenly landed at the KSR station along with sniffer dogs and began conducting extensive checks0 of platforms, trains, luggage and passengers as soon as they received news around 8.45 am that a ‘live bomb’, later found to be ‘an improvised grenade’, was located at the trolley path near platform one of the station.
The 22-coach Sanghamitra Express (Train no 12295) with a scheduled departure of 9 am from here to Danapur (in Bihar) was stationed on platform one, with passengers getting on board the over-crowded train. As soon as it was suspected by security personnel that a ‘live bomb’ was around, passengers of S1 and S2 and the first general coach were immediately evacuated, said a senior railway official.
As most of them were alighting, a passenger came over and told an RPF staffer that an unidentified luggage was found in one coach, adding to the panic. With the entire train operations at the station stopped for nearly 30 minutes, and no announcement on what exactly was going on was made, passengers were clueless.
People at the station were calling up relatives on their phones saying trains were not moving at the station.
“Some major problem happened at the railway station,” one caller was heard shouting. Many passengers kept asking the TV camera crew as to what was happening. The train finally left at 11. 10 am, a good 130 minutes after its scheduled departure. A senior railway official said that three Express trains and two passenger trains suffered delays.