Rail roko to attract criminal prosecution in state

Bhubaneswar: Rail roko in Odisha will attract criminal prosecution, besides penalty. A decision in this regard was taken at the first meeting of State Level Security Committee for Railways chaired by DGP R P Sharma on Monday.

RPF IG Atul Pathak while addressing the meeting directed officials to criminally prosecute agitators for ‘Rail Roko’. “Such agitations cause financial loss to the government and inconvenience to passengers. Keeping this in view, the Railways has decided to criminally prosecute the agitators,” he said.

The meeting also decided to apprise the courts of financial loss occurring due to rail roko so that the agitators can be made financially liable under the Railways Act.

The DGP said more stations in the state will be brought under CCTV surveillance. “It was observed that due to CCTV cameras many cases of theft have been detected in railway stations like Cuttack, Bhubaneswar, Puri, Rourkela and Jharsuguda. Besides, patrolling and security beefed up especially in Southern Odisha keeping in view Left Wing Extremism (LWE) threat to railway properties,” he added.

Director (Intelligence) Sunil Roy, IGP (Railway) Arun Bothra, Joint Director (SIB) Vinita Sharma, IG-cum-CSC SE Railway SK Sinha, DIG (Intelligence) N Bhoi among others were present in the meeting.

The committee comprising senior officials of Odisha Police, GRP, RPF, and Intelligence Bureau was recently formed as per the direction of the Ministry of Home Affairs.