MUMBAI, November 11: At least 1000 Western Railway (WR) passengers narrowly missed death, when three coaches of the 244-Up Borivli local headed for Churchgate derailed near Mumbai Central on Tuesday morning. Railway sources said that the train was negotiating a "diamond cross-over" near point 125 on the Up local line. Nobody was injured.

This is the second consecutive day that services at Mumbai Central were disrupted. Local services were disrupted yesterday as nearly 3000 activists of the Samajwadi Party tried to stop the August Kranti Rajdhani Express headed for New Delhi. They were demanding bail for those languishing in jail under the scrapped Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA).

Today, while negotiating a turn, motorman Khatib felt a heavy jerk in the rear portion of the train, following which he applied the emergency brakes. The train came to a halt after scaling 25 metres of the track, said officials supervising the restoration work.

Suburban services on the WR came to a standstill for nearly five hours as passengers, most of them office-goers, were stranded at almost all the stations between Churchgate and Virar. Regular announcements informing passengers that south Mumbai-bound trains would ply only up to Dadar, was of little help. Harried commuters who jumped off the derailed bogies relate their nightmarish experience. ``Just as the train was changing tracks, it violently shook several times. Nobody had any clue of what was happening and before anyone could reach the emergency alarm chain, the coaches were entrenched in the soil,'' said Rashid Gheewala, a commuter from Dadar.

Another visibly shaken commuter Alka Bhagwat said, "I am so scared that I may stop using the railways for at least a few months before I recover from the shock."

Angry commuters said the WR infrastructure was on the verge of collapse, and that it was going the CR way. Said Rishabh Antani, a CR commuter, "I have been walking from Lower Parel to reach my client at Opera House. As I reside in Vikhroli, these mishaps are nothing new to me," he said.

Meanwhile, WR CPRO Ravindra Tandon, terming the derailment as "unfortunate", said fast restoration work made it possible to resume Virar trains every 15 minutes and Borivli-bound trains every 10 minutes.

Were SP protestors behind the mishap?

November 11: Today's derailment of local services near Mumbai Central might be the handiwork of Samajwadi Party activists who were seen near the railway tracks all Monday night, claim Western Railway officials.

A senior official who inspected the derailment site on Tuesday afternoon told Express Newsline that technical and maintenance lapses on the part of the railways notwithstanding, one cannot rule out the possibility of sabotage.

`They (SP activists) were seen around all night,'' he asserted. The railway officials are banking on the theory that ``the activists might have loosened nine of the ten bolts on a fish plate near the 125 point and cross-over''.

The spot where the local derailed is just about 150 metres from the place where the activists were beaten up by the police, he informed.``They however ensured that all the bolts were not removed fully as that would have led to an accident immediately. The very first train passing on that point would have derailed,'' pointed out another official. The fish plates and the bolts, which were cut into pieces, were also inspected by the railway officials. ``The bolts have been cut after several hits by the train's weight,'' the officials added.

Meanwhile, Abu Asim Azmi, President of the Mumbai unit of the Samajwadi Party refuted the railway officials' claims that his party activists were involved with tampering the fish plates.

``Our party workers were informed in advance that they will not resort to any kind of anti-social activities. As a matter of fact, there were more policemen present there than party workers," he claimed, adding that the allegations are a part of the conspiracy by the railway police and the state government against the "growing" Samajwadi Party.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.