Thaindian News

Mumbai, Sep 1 (IANS) Police fired in the air and burst teargas to control commuters who turned violent after suburban train services on the Western Railway (WR) network were disrupted Tuesday, officials said.
According to a WR spokesman, train services on the Borivli-Virar sector were hit when an overhead electric wire broke and got entangled with a local train.

Though train services were restored at 10.55 a.m., the WR suspended two railway section engineers in-charge of the overhead wiring equipment.

The WR also decided to initiate a complete and extensive examination of the entire overhead wiring network between Churchgate-Virar section, the spokesman said Tuesday.

This is the third time in the past 36 hours that train services - the lifeline of Mumbai - on the WR network have been hit due to technical snags.

A population of nearly 1.2 million commutes between the Borivli-Virar suburban section, of the total nearly 4.5 million who use the WR network.

The commuters’ fury was witnessed most at Nalla Sopara in Vasai region, nearly 56 km away from downtown Mumbai.

When the spontaneous protest became violent, police fired four rounds in the air, burst several teargas shells and caned the protesters.

The agitated commuters pelted stones on railway property and damaged some furniture and fittings.

Monday morning, an overhead wire snapped at Bhayander, leading to disruption in suburban services, followed by a technical snag near Mira Road station.

In fact, thousands of office-goers could not reach their offices in south Mumbai for the past two days.

A consultant in Bollywood, K. Shahi, living in Mira Road, was forced to take two days off owing to disruption in the train services. “I get weekends off, so I am sitting at home for four days now,” Shahi said.

Even as services limped back to normalcy by late afternoon, the trains were still running behind schedule by upto 30 minutes.

This is the second time in 13 months that Nalla Sopara witnessed commuters’ agitation. On July 22 last year, they squatted on railway tracks to protest delays in services and power shortages in Thane district.