Railway cops to be felicitated

BHUBANESWAR: When Debashish Biswas and Sitaram Meena, constables of the Railway Protection Force (RPF), caught Subhash Ramachandran on charges of setting ablaze three empty trains in Puri on November 12, little did they know that he would be a prize catch that would bring them laurels.
To their pleasant surprise, the East Coast Railway (ECoR) has decided to reward the two young constables for catching Tamil Nadu-based Ramachandran, who later confessed to police that he was paid by a terrorist group to cause arson attacks in trains across the country.
On Thursday, the state government moved the ministry of home affairs, recommending an NIA probe into the matter. "We will inform the railway board about the prize catch by our two young constables. The duo deserves recognition and rewards. The accused has suspected links with terrorists and by catching him, the constables foiled his plans," inspector general (RPF) Atul Pathak told TOI.
While Biswas, who hails from West Bengal, joined RPF just two months ago, his colleague Meena, whose home state is Rajasthan, has been in the RPF for the past three years. Biswas and Meena are on a high about the turn of events and said they feel encouraged to do better because of the recognition.
"Our seniors gave us a pat for catching Ramachandran. This will motivate us in our work," they said in unison.
They narrated how they got suspicious about Ramachandran amid hundreds of passengers at the station: "Firefighters were busy dousing the fire in three empty trains on platforms two, four and seven. We suspected that the accused might try to set ablaze other trains parked in the washing line, as it was dark there. We walked over to the dark portion of Platform No. 8. An empty train was parked there. Suddenly, we saw a spark of light that seemed to come from a matchbox. We ran towards the train and found Ramachandran. He was trying to escape when we nabbed him. During a search, we found a matchbox and a knife on him."
Puri RPF inspector Prakash Bhoi said the CCTV footage later confirmed that Ramachandran had set fire to the trains. "We showed him the CCTV footage and he confessed to have set ablaze other trains in Gaya, Haridwar and Kharagpur. It was a herculean task to scan the CCTV footage for 17 hours and establish his complicity in the incidents," Bhoi said.