Wooden block found on railway track : Sabotage expected

On Thursday, October 24, train services were interrupted after a two-foot-long wooden block weighing more than six kilograms was found on a railway track close to Malihabad Railway Station in Uttar Pradesh. When the Delhi-Lucknow Bareilly-Varanasi Express, number 14236, collided with the wooden block, the local pilot had to use emergency brakes to prevent an accident.

Station masters were notified after the event, and the up and down tracks were thoroughly inspected. Concerns over potential sabotage were raised when railway personnel discovered another wooden block on the up track during the inspection. To maintain safety, train operations were stopped for about two hours, and they didn’t start up again until the blockage was removed from the tracks. To look into the incident further, railway authorities have submitted a formal complaint.

Two weeks prior to the incident, an empty LPG cylinder was found on railroad tracks close to Roorkee, Uttarakhand. There has been a recent spike in train derailment attempts nationwide, and this instance is just one of several. 18 such attempts have been made nationwide since August, according to Indian Railways, with three more being recorded in the weeks that followed.

There have been 24 instances since June 2023 where different items, such as cement blocks, bicycles, iron rods, and LPG cylinders, have been set on rails in what appears to be an effort to derail trains. The fact that 15 of these events happened in August and five more in September highlights the growing concern about railway safety.