BENGALURU: There was high drama at Yesvantpur Railway Station on Sunday morning, after passengers who boarded a train the previous night to Howrah in Kolkata, were sent back to the originating station as Chennai Railway Division refused passage for the train beyond Katpadi Junction, citing heavy rain. The Bangalore Railway Division had to create a tight security cordon at Yesvantpur station to pacify irate passengers, and was finally forced to run the train to Howrah through another route.
According to a reliable source, the Yesvantpur-Howrah Express (Train no. 12864) departed from Yesvantpur at 7.35pm Saturday and reached Katpadi around 12.30am (early Sunday). “Due to unprecedented rain in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, and in the interest of the passengers’ safety, Chennai Division wanted the train to be reversed to Bengaluru. So the train was brought back to Yesvantpur,” he explained.
Passengers were upset over being brought back to Bengaluru, said another source. “We were alerted about their frame of mind by our staff before Yesvantpur railway station. A cordon of Government Railway Police and Railway Protection Force was already on Platform 1 when the train reached.” The passengers raised angry slogans and threatened railway staff, the source added. “The train was sent back only to ensure their safety, or they might have got stranded somewhere in rain.”
Divisional Railway Manager, Bangalore Division, Shyam Singh told TNIE, “We sent a Divisional Commercial Manager early in the morning to take care of all refunds. Special counters were opened and tickets refunded in full, including those who had booked online,” he said.
Another source said that nearly 400 passengers who left the station for their homes in the morning returned to the station at 9am, and demanded that another train be run to Howrah. “The vociferous demands forced Railways to run the same train (Train no. 12864) at 1.30pm on Sunday, bypassing Katpadi, and running it via Vijayawada,” a source said. DRM Singh added, “Special counters were opened to issue new tickets for passengers who wanted to travel by the afternoon train.