Mumbai suburban train services stalled for 6 hours

Mumbai: In the worst kind of commuter fury witnessed in recent times, Central Railway (CR) came to a grinding halt for the majority of the day as irate people ran amok setting vehicles on fire, vandalising railway property, injuring a motorman and staging agitation at Diva and Dombivali stations to protest the delay in trains on Friday.

The vehicles of three senior police officers were also torched. Twelve persons have been arrested.

Lakhs of passengers, who were waiting to go to their offices, were left stranded. To make matters worse, the CR motormen also went on a flash strike to protest the injury to a motorman.

A bleeding commuter being escorted away in Mumbai on Friday. (Photo: PTI)

The trouble on the CR line started when three pantographs of a CST-bound train from Badlapur got damaged at Thakurli station and the train came to a standstill with huge sparks.

Soon, another Kalyan-CST train also experienced similar technical failure following which the entire slow line towards CST stopped functioning as the trains were diverted.

This led to huge crowds at all railway stations during peak hours. At Diva, commuters came on to the tracks at around 9.15 am and staged a rail roko. The protest soon turned violent as they started pelting stones.