Culprit of massive Tokyo rail power outage is a slug!

A slug has been held responsible for bringing Japan's high-speed rail network to a halt last month.

Presence of the mollusc in the rail network's electrical equipment box caused the outage on May 30.

The power cut on the railway line, overseen by the JR Kitakyushu rail company, left 12,000 passengers stranded and helpless.

A spokesman of the company informed that the slug squirmed its way through a gap in the power box.

"We have not heard of power outages caused by slugs in recent years. If we find such a gap when inspecting equipment (in the future), we will fix them," he said, as cited by CNN.

The power outage occurred during the rush hours at around 9:40 am which subsequently led the rail company to cancel 26 trains in total.

Upon inspection by the engineers, it was found that the rail networks electrical equipment housed a dead charred slug measuring two to three centimetres.

A company spokesman suggested that the slug was burned to death after coming in contact with an electrical cable leading to the mass power failure.

The cause of the sudden stop in railway services in Tokyo was unknown for almost a month.

The ostrobogulous reason first came to light in local media reports on June 22.