“They slept inside the coaches, nearly three hundred of them, occupying the seats of the train that would leave first in the morning towards Kashmir from Banihal.”
Faizan Wani
SRINAGAR: Excitement turned sour for hundreds of people from Kashmir on Sunday as they had to spend the night inside railroad cars at Banihal railway station in Jammu, after the last train back refused to overload.
All of them had been excited to travel by train through the newly inaugurated 10.96 km-long Pir Panjal tunnel, believed to be India’s longest and Asia’s second longest tunnel.
They had boarded a train from Baramulla which was booked much beyond its capacity, thus ferrying many more passengers to Banihal than it was actually authorised to.
But they faced a hard time as the last train back from there, scheduled at around 5 pm, refused to overload.
“They slept inside the coaches, nearly three hundred of them, occupying the seats of the train that would leave first in the morning towards the valley,” said a journalist whose relatives were among those stranded at the station.
Sources say unregulated ticketing has resulted in overloading and that trains often ferry 400 percent more passengers than the trains can actually contain.
But Superintendent of Police, Railways, Bashir Ahmed Itoo told FreePress that the extra rush are usually those passengers who travel without tickets at all.
“We are at it, trying to regulate the number of passengers and stopping those who travel without tickets,” he said.
He said that the passengers were stranded at the Banihal station because the authorities refused to let them take to the roof of the train, fearing a mishap as the coaches would pass through the tunnel.
