Railways lost Rs 800 crore in 2016-17

Reiterating its doubts over the sabotage angle being responsible for recent accidents, Indian Railways said on Wednesday due to incidents similar to sabotage, the railways has suffered a loss of more than Rs 700 crore on freight side and Rs 100 crore during the current financial year. 

Interestingly, the national carrier added that some of the 45-odd such incidents that happened in the calendar year 2016 has been referred to the National Investigative Agency and the Central Bureau of Investigation. "There were 45 incidents, including sabotage, tampering of rail tracks, stone pelting and sleepers found on tracks, which are under investigation," said 

Mohammed Jamshed, Member Traffic of Indian railways. Jamshed added that there was a disruption on 7 million tonne of freight traffic because of these incidents, which lead to a loss of Rs 700 crore. 

On the other hand, the loss on passenger revenue was around Rs 100 crore. 

This comes at a time when a parliamentary standing committee report in December 2016 cites only one suspected case of sabotage in 2015-16, while the previous high in terms of the number of suspected sabotage cases was 18 cases way back in 2003-04. "In 2016 calendar year, we have seen seven cases of track explosion, three cases of tampering and 13 cases in which  improvised explosive device (IED) were found on tracks," he added. The statement comes at a time when a series of accidents in last three months had cost nearly 190 lives, increasing the demand for more allocation of funds for safety and maintenance. 

"We have submitted our demands for the safety fund. It is upon them to take a call on this," he said.