Land of Jewels (Sana Leibak)

Jawans to pilot trains, special forces for track security: Guwahati/Calcutta, Dec 14: Jolted by the blast on Rajdhani Express, the Northeast Frontier Railway on Friday decided to revamp the existing security network on tracks across Assam with special emphasis on vulnerable stretches. Henceforth, personnel of the Railway Protection Force and Railway Protection Special Force, the combat wing of the RPF, will move ahead of the trains to carry out checks. Spokesman for the NF Railway, T. Rabha, said security on the railway tracks has been augmented to an “unprecedented level”. Five persons were killed and four injured when a bomb exploded underneath one of the coaches of the Dibrugarh Rajdhani Express between Naojan and Chongajan railway stations at 1.06am on Thursday. Though investigations are on to determine where and how the blast occurred, a senior North East Frontier Railway division official in Calcutta today said the bomb exploded in a luggage van, hinting at how security in the c...

Five killed, nine injured: Guwahati, Dec 13: Suspected Adivasi insurgents exploded a powerful bomb in the Delhi-bound Rajdhani Express, killing five passengers and injuring nine in Assam's Golaghat district on Thursday. The blast took place in a compartment attached to the luggage van of the Dibrugarh-Guwahati-Delhi Rajdhani Express, two km ahead of Sungajan (Chungajan) railway station at 1.06 am, North-East Frontier Railway CPRO Trikal Rabha said. Five passengers died on the spot and the four critically injured were admitted to a hospital at Dimapur in neighbouring Nagaland. The five others who received minor injuries were discharged after first aid. The dead were identified as S P Prasad (24), A K Jha (30), Laxman Rai (20), Sudama Rai (45), Dineshwar Prasad (19). The critically injured are Amarnath Singh, Tapas Rai, Laxman Jha and Pradip Choudhury. The 30 other passengers in the compartment were accommodated in the three-tier AC compartment of the train that continued with its o...

Gaisal ghost strikes again: Nijbari (Phansidewa), Dec. 10: Death struck at express speed but this time the casualty was one. More than 1,000 passengers of the 4055 DN Brahmputra Mail had a miraculous escape when 14 of the 17 coaches jumped tracks here last night (Sunday night). In 1999, the same train -- Delhi-bound Brahmaputra Mail -- had a head-on collision with the Delhi-Guwahati Avadh-Assam Express in Gaisal, killing at least 300 passengers. The Gaisal ghost came back again on December 23, 2003 when 11 coaches of the train got derailed in Malda. There were no casualties then. The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR), which is not ruling out sabotage, claimed that 66 people were injured though eyewitnesses said the figure would be at least 100. “Of the 66, 30 were released after first aid while the others are under treatment at different hospitals in and around Siliguri,” said T. Rabha, the chief public relations officer of the NFR. Most people were asleep when the bogies jumped tracks ...