A mob set on fire railway property, assaulted the on-duty station manager and put up a blockade at the Dum Dum Junction in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district on Wednesday following the death of a person after being hit by a train.
Suburban train services in the evening were affected due to the blockade that continued for one-and-a-half-hours.
According to Eastern Railway authorities, a number of EMU locals were cancelled and several others were detained at different stations en route. The Sealdah-New Delhi Rajdhani Express scheduled to leave Sealdah station at 4.50 p.m. was delayed by over an hour.
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Railway authorities said an unidentified man who was walking along the railway track between the Dum Dum Junction and Belgharia station at around 3.12 p.m. was hit by an approaching passenger train from Barrackpore. The person died on the spot.
“Even as the Government Railway Police were asked by the station manager to recover the body, a group of people suddenly started pelting stones at the station manager's office and the railway cabin. They set ablaze the office of the traction foreman near the cabin. Several important documents were gutted,” an Eastern Railway spokesperson said.
The agitators squatted on the tracks in protest against the death of the person, holding up traffic on three lines in Sealdah division including Bongaon, main line and Dankuni sections. They also lit a bon-fire on the track.
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