RAHA: The Railway Protection Force ( RPF), on Monday carried out an operation against unauthorised vending and arrested several people in this regard from different railway stations in Assam.
The RPF personnel arrested a total of 11 unauthorised vendors at different stations under a special day-long drive conducted by RPF officials, Chaparmukh to ensure the maintenance of hygienic and quality supply of food to passengers during train journeys.
According to a statement issued by the RPF authority, the unauthorised vendors were booked under relevant sections of the Railway Act. They were later forwarded to the special railway court , Guwahati while some of them were fined for boarding trains without tickets, the release said.
The statement said that railway security personnel do not allow unauthorised vendors and hawkers to board reserved coaches of trains from the passengers’ safety point of view. Apart from the safety and cleanliness of running trains, railways have focused now on ensuring the supply of quality and hygienic food to passengers not only on station premises but also from at authorised food stalls.
“It has been recently observed that unauthorised vendors and hawkers have been illegally selling food items on running passenger trains and on railway platforms in violation of the Railway Act,” adding that railways have thus constituted a special team and RPF men to check unauthorised vendors and hawkers," the statement added.
Previously, the Railway Protection Force (RPF) had recovered a huge quantity of rare species of tortoises which were being transported illegally in train no. 13176 (Silchar - Sealdah) Kanchenjunga Express. Talking to the media, Sabyachachi De, Chief Public Relations Officer of N F Railway said that an input from intelligence was received by IPF/CIB/LMG regarding transportation of huge quantity of tortoises by some unknown persons. “Immediately the matter was shared to IPF/RPF/LMG and GRP/LMG. Instantly, a team of CIB/LMG along with officials of RPF and GRP Lumding conducted a raid and search in train no. 13176 on arrival at Lumding Railway station. During checking, they noticed 3 suspicious black coloured bags under the custody of two persons kept under their berth. They asked the persons to open their bags and accordingly they opened the bags and found two plastic containers in each bag (i.e 6 containers) consisting of total 74 tortoises. On further interrogation they confessed that they were transporting the tortoises from Silchar to Guwahati. After completing all formalities, the recovered tortoises with plastic baskets and bags along with the two persons were taken into custody by RPF/Post/LMG for further legal action,” he stated.
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