Awaskumar Dube (25) was travelling on a slow train from Andheri towards Churchgate when he was hit above his eye by a stone thrown at him by one Prakash Sadashiv Dhamre at the Chincholi railway cross. Dube, a worker at a foodstall at Andheri railway station, was on his way to Malad, standing on the footboard of train at 11.55 pm when the incident occurred.

After getting down at Malad, Dube was taken to the Bhagwati hospital where he was administered first aid and his statement was recorded by the Borivli railway police. He told the police the stone had come from a cluster of hutments lining the tracks.

When police went to the spot, Dhamre was pointed out by the slum-dwellers as the culprit. In his confession, the 28-year-old Dhamre said he had thrown the stone at a friend over a fight after a drinking binge. The stonemissed the target and hit Dube instead. Dhamre has been remanded to police custody till November 28.

The detection of the case couldn't have come at a better time for the much-maligned railway police, with 42 cases of stone pelting having been registered this year.

But the Government Railway Police (GRP) has also decided to enlist volunteers from political parties to counter this menace. They will reinforce existing volunteer groups comprising slum-dwellers and police.This suggestion was made by Youth Congress volunteers after a delegation met Special IGP SS Suradkar of GRP last Friday.

``We will draw up lists of political parties within a week and officers in charge of individual GRP police stations have been instructed to meet the parties,'' Superintendent of Police S Ramachandran said. However, GRP officials added that barring the Congress, the initial response from other parties had been lukewarm.

``We decided to provide GRP with volunteers when the IG said the force suffered from shortage ofmanpower,'' Mumbai Youth Congress President Charanjit Singh Sapra said. The GRP has an effective strength of 1,930 policemen, when it needs twice as much, officials say. Mumbai YC will be holding a meeting of its district presidents on Friday along with lists of its volunteers. Sapra said YC would provide 1,000 volunteers to assist GRP. The volunteers, who would be given a day's basic training in regulations by GRP, would remain until incidents of crime on railway tracks declined or till the proposed railway police commissionerate was formed.