Southern Railway on high alert after threat call

The senior operation manager of Chennai division has issued a circular on Friday, December 2 (copy available with DTNext) to all station managers, particularly the one’s at Chennai Central and Egmore, asking them to advise their staff to be alert to suspected activities. “Railways being soft-target to such people, staff should be alert to identify any suspected activities,” the operations department communique (No. M/T260/Optg/SMs) titled ‘terrorist threat’ said. As per the letter, a ‘threat call’ has been received on 139 (IRCTC helpline) at 2.20 pm on November 29 from a mobile number.  Understandably, the circular has not revealed the nature of the threat issued by the anonymous caller. 

Notably, it did not deter the operations department from instructing the station managers to educate the staff under their control to “be alert and more careful during their duty hours” and inform RPF and GRP immediately if any suspected person or objected were noticed by them. The station masters have also been asked to s h a r e the information with all traffic inspectors for necessary action. 

Though RPF and government railway police here were no strangers to threat calls, most of which end up as hoax, security personnel are leaving nothing to chance, more so after the low-intensity twin-blast, which killed a 24-year-old techie and injured over a dozen people aboard Bangalore-Guwahati Express on platform no 9 at Chennai Central on May 1, 2014. When asked, a security department officer of SR who described such circulars as “secret internal communication” routinely sent to HoDs on receipt of threats, refused to divulge details pertaining to instructions given to the operation department staff on field. It may be recalled that a bomb threat call to Chennai Central railway police control room on February 18 this year caused a flutter. 

Police pressed sniffer dogs and bomb squads into action at Mylapore and Central before declaring it a hoax.