Over 73,000 eunuchs held for extorting money from railway passengers in past 4 yrs; almost 50 daily

More than 73,000 eunuchs were arrested for extorting money from railway passengers in the past four years, on an average 50 such people on a daily basis, the railway ministry has said in reply to an RTI query.

The data assumes significance as passengers have complained of harassment by eunuchs who often board trains and extort money from them. Some of these passengers also had to face abuses, in the worst cases physical assault too, incase they refused to give in to such demands, officials said.

The Railway Protection Force (RPF) has been regularly conducting special drives to check such instances, they said.

In the reply to the RTI application, the railway ministry said a total of 73,837 eunuchs were arrested during 2015 and till January this year while extorting money from passengers.

Of these, a total of 13,546 were arrested in 2015, 19,800 in 2016, 18,526 in 2017 and 20,566 in 2018, it said.

As many as 1,399 eunuchs were arrested in January this year, the ministry said.

"Policing on railways being a state subject, prevention of crime, registration of cases, their investigation and maintenance of law and order in railway premises as well as on running trains are the statutory responsibility of the state governments, which they discharge through the Government Railway Police (GRP)," it said.

The Indian Railways is the second largest railway system in the world covering around 65,000 km of track laid across over 8,000 stations and running around 19,000 trains daily, the officials said.

The railway network is divided into 16 main zones -- central railway, east central railway, east coast railway, western railway, north central railway, north eastern railway, north western railway, north east frontier railway and northern railway, among others.

Besides them, south central railway, south east central railway, south eastern railway, south western railway, southern railway, west central railway and western railway are other zones.