The strange case of Katni-Damoh rail heist

How could 1.6 km of rail lying alongside an active - and busy - railway track between the two towns be stolen and sold off as scrap?

There is a Railway Property (Unlawful Possession) Act of 1966, amended in 2012. This defines railway property — “any good, money or valuable security or animal, belonging to, or in the charge or possession of, a railway administration”. National Crime Records Bureau has data on crime (latest year being 2016). For railways, there are few cases under Railway Property (Unlawful Possession) Act. There are many more under Indian Railways Act, 1989, primarily, though not exclusively, for ticketing violations. For example, destruction of railway property is covered under Indian Railways Act, not stealing it. The 1989 definition of railway property includes “railway track, bridges, station, buildings and installations, carriages or wagons, locomotives, signaling, telecommunications, electric traction and block equipment”. When we hear of railway property being stolen, we have a mental image of that railway property. This is a quote from a judgment. “Thereafter they searched the house of the accused in presence of the independent witness where eight items, that is, ERC (elastic rail clip) in 44 pieces, metal liner in three pieces, two-way key in 16 pieces, fish plate in two pieces, dog spike in four pieces, hook bolt in one pieces, nuts six pieces and overhead wire 20 meters were recovered.” We will think of track lead wires, copper, fittings, signaling tools, clamps and stores, some of which will find its way into a scrap market. Perhaps even goods entrusted to railways for carriage.

Anton Chekhov wrote a short story called A Malefactor. A peasant, Grigoryev, is hauled up before a magistrate, accused of unscrewing and stealing nuts from a railway line. The peasant thinks he has a right to do this, since the nuts are used by local peasants as weights for their fishing lines. Apparently, Chekhov based this story on such a real life malefactor. I am going to quote from Constance Garnett’s translation. At one level, the conversation between Grigoryev and the magistrate is quite funny. “Why! How many years have we all in the village been unscrewing nuts, and the Lord has been merciful; and you talk of accidents, killing people. If I had carried away a rail or put a log across the line, say, then maybe it might have upset the train, but... pouf! A nut!” “But you must understand that the nut holds the rail fast to the sleepers!” “We understand that... We don’t unscrew them all... we leave some... We don’t do it thoughtlessly... we understand...”  As Grigoryev said, carrying away a rail is different. Rails are made of steel, with a certain UTS (ultimate tensile strength). The steel has a certain chemical composition (medium magnesium, with some chromium and vanadium). It is welded together. Un-welding of every tie/clip will have to be done, or the entire stretch of rail carted off. Even if the rail is restructured or moulded, the composition can, in principle, be traced to whichever foundry it has gone to. Enforcing this might be difficult, but it should be a deterrent. Finally, a stretch of rail is heavy. It is expensive to cart, melt and recast rail made of track-grade steel. The benefit is not commensurate with the costs, not at first blush.

Illustration: Binay Sinha

Given this, there was a rather surprising news item. This wasn’t active track, track that trains run on. But it was right next to active track. There was 1.6 km of rail lying there, alongside active railway track between Katni and Damoh (both in Madhya Pradesh). Reportedly, the weight was more than 100 tonnes. This was stolen and sold off as scrap. Last known, or last reported, 60 per cent of stolen rail has been recovered from scrap-dealers. Some minor accomplices have been arrested. But the brains behind the heist have fled to Pakistan. This may seem surprising in India, but there have been global instances. What’s surprising in India is that these rails were along an active railway line. Take an example from South Africa, from near the town of Nigel. This was an active railway line in the sense of a functional one, but it wasn’t one along which trains were continually plying, unlike the Katni-Damoh route. It was a stretch of track from a depot to a repair centre, which presumably means it wasn’t used continuously, only sporadically. If you thought 1.6 km was long, in a recent incident, thieves stole 10 km of track there, weighing 960 tonnes, and this was done in a single night.

There are other instances of rail being stolen when lines have been abandoned, such as the old railway line between Pretoria and Magaliesburg. It has happened in Britain too. In Sunderland, a man was prosecuted for stealing about 4 km of railway track from an abandoned line. He did this during the day and no one batted an eyelid, because the thieves were dressed in maintenance jackets, resembling uniform of a company entrusted with maintenance. On a smaller scale, there was another incident from Ireland, again from an abandoned line. What’s odd about the Indian case is that it wasn’t an abandoned line. The distance between Katni and Damoh is 100 km and every day, there are almost 40 passenger trains that run between the two stations. Even during the night, there are  windows during which passenger trains don’t run there and those windows must be used by goods trains. That’s what makes the Katni-Damoh heist so strange. How could someone not have noticed? Or was it noticed and ignored?

The author is chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. 

Views are personal