MANGALURU: Tipplers dozing off on railway tracks may not be common in India. But, a Puttur man learnt a lesson the hard way by doing so. He was thrown behind bars for a day and was also made to cough up a fine for trespassing Railway property drunk.
Dinesh Bhandary (52), a resident of Padyannuru village and a labourer, was sleeping on the tracks near Puttur on Tuesday night, after drinking at a bar located close to the railway line. When some passersby asked him to move away and cautioned that he could be crushed under the wheels of a train on the busy route linking the coast with Bengaluru, he not only refused to listen, but also abused them for waking him up.
Soon, a photo of Bhandary resting on the tracks was uploaded on social media, following which Puttur-Subramanya rail users tweeted the same and tagged @RailSeva. The officials in the department took a serious note of the matter and dispatched RPF personnel from Sakleshpur to Puttur to catch the trespasser.
The very next day, cops went looking for Bhandary. “We were inquiring about him at a bar near the railway track. People told us that he was not a regular, but asked us to wait expecting him to return. Within a few minutes, we saw him approaching the bar,” said an RPF officer.
When confronted, Bhandary admitted to the cops that he slept on the tracks, but argued that he had done nothing wrong. He agreed to go with the cops after they convinced him that it is a restricted area and sleeping on the tracks is a violation under the Railway Act. He was produced before a local court, which sent him to jail for a day and slapped a fine of Rs 700, after finding him guilty under two Sections of the
Railway Act.