The 10 kg piece of wood that was found on the tracks

New Delhi:

A passenger train again hit a thick piece of wood held on the tracks on Thursday evening in what is suspected to be sabotage in Uttar Pradesh. The incident comes a month after an empty gas cylinder was found on the tracks near Prempur railway station in UP’s Kanpur and 10 detonators were found on a railway track in an attempt to blow up a train carrying army personnel in Burhanpur district of Madhya Pradesh.

Train no. 14236 Bareilly-Varanasi Express plying between Delhi and Lucknow hit the two meter long piece of wood weighing over 10 kg and dragged it for some distance. It got stuck under the metal wheels, officials said. The train driver, or locomotive pilot, was able to bring the train to a safe stop, they said.

The incident damaged a signaling device on the tracks, which affected the Lucknow-Hardoi Upper and Lower lines and prompted locomotive drivers of other trains to operate with caution.

The nearest railway station issued a warning to station masters and sent an inspection team to look into the matter. The inspection team and locomotive pilot removed the wood with great difficulty, officials said, adding that it disrupted rail traffic for two hours.

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Railway Protection Force personnel also reached the spot to secure the area and helped remove the thick piece of wood, officials said.

The central government has taken the recent incidents of attempted railway sabotage very seriously and has tasked the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to look into the cases.

The September incident where detonators were found on the tracks happened near Sagphata railway station in Madhya Pradesh; it targeted the army special train traveling from Jammu and Kashmir to Karnataka. As the train passed over the detonators, the locomotive driver became alert to an explosion and immediately stopped the train. No one was injured.

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In another worrying incident, an empty gas cylinder was found on the tracks near Kanpur’s Prempur railway station on September 22. The driver of a freight train had to apply the emergency brakes to stop it.

The NIA has started a preliminary investigation to establish any sabotage angle in the recent train derailments and accidents, officials said on Friday, news agency PTI reported. Nothing concrete has yet emerged to suggest that there were any attempted sabotage in these train derailments or accidents. The NIA is looking into four such cases.

Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said last month that the railway administration was on alert against potential attempts to sabotage trains and was in talks with authorities, including the NIA and police in several states.