``The paperwork has already started,'' said Superintendent of Police (Railways) K Ramchandran, adding this was the first time railway police was looking at detaining such miscreants rather than convicting them.

Since MPDA can only be invoked in cases registered under the Indian Penal Code, the accused will also be charged under Section 307 - attempt to murder - something which has been strongly advocated by Union Minister of State for Railways Ram Naik.

Railway police have been under fire for the past six months for not being able to curb stone-throwingincidents. These incidents, coupled with attacks on women commuters, had led to various political parties demanding harsh punishments for the culprits.

While Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde threatened to invoke the `mini-TADA' in cases of stone-throwing incidents, Minister of State for Home Prabhakar More called for jailing these miscreants for at least one year. But Special Inspector General of Police (Railways) S S Suradkar brushed aside Munde's idea calling it impractical. ``The Maharashtra Organised Crime Control Ordinance, popularly called the mini-TADA, cannot be applied here because these incidents are sporadic in nature,'' he said.

The MPDA is seen as a means of bypassing the courts, where the success rate of railway police to obtain convictions for stone-throwers has been negligible.

Even though the GRP managed to detect 20 out of the 195 cases in the last six years, 14 of the culprits walked out free after various courts acquitted them for want of evidence. ``What evidence can we provide,except perhaps the confessional statements of the accused, who promptly deny the same before the court,'' said a senior railway police officer.

In the only conviction in recent times, three boys were found guilty by the court in Palghar in 1997, only to be let off with a stern warning.

Though the three 11-year-old boys Ullas Gaware, Shantaram Goel and Deepak Goral confessed they were used to throwing stones at trains regularly, they were let off with a warning, considering their young age and the inability of Pardesi to identify them.

These setbacks, coupled with the increasing media glare on crime on trains and the fact that they could not detect nearly 90 per cent of the cases, have led police to think of invoking the MPDA for stone-throwing related crimes.

Most of the fresh cases are likely to be put under the purview of the Act. Under this Act, the commissioner of police will have the authority to detain an accused for a period of three months to one year. During detention, the case will beexamined by the home department of the state government and then will have to pass scrutiny of an Advisory Board set up by the state. The Board will have at least two members who have been High Court judges.

Once an accused is detained under the Act, he is likely to stay behind bars for at least a fortnight, the time the home department takes to examine his case. If the matter goes before the Advisory Board, the accused will have to finance a quasi-legal battle at personal cost. ``The harassment is too high a price to pay for throwing a stone,'' said Ramchandran.