MANANPUR (JAMUI): On Thursday afternoon, it was a close brush with death for many of the passengers, including this correspondent, on board the 13331 Up Dhanbad-Patna Inter City Express which came under a rain of Maoist gunfire for around one and half hours.

I boarded the B1- AC-III coach at Jasidih on the Howrah-Delhi mainline for Patna at 11.30am. My co-passengers were R N Rathore, Rajeshwari Devi and their daughter, Chiranjeev Das, Alpana Biswas and her mother. My journey was to end at around 3.30pm. Everything was normal with the passengers sleeping, sitting and talking.

Around 1pm we reached Jamui – one of Bihar’s seven Maoists-hit districts. After 15 minutes, the train stopped unannounced, short of Mananpur police station. We heard cracking sound and thought children were throwing stones at the train, not rare on this stretch. But, soon it became clear that these were gunshots. I saw a group of armed boys and girls, all in their teens or below 25 years of age, with their heads covered as they carried firearms.

“Maoists have attacked! They have seized the train. Hide. Save yourself. Hide below the seats, lie on the board, in the passage. Go crawling. Keep heads and bodies below the window. Bullets will hit the windows,” someone sounded the general alarm. Others rushed to close the main doors. Those behind pulled the window curtains. Passengers did as ordered, or advised; no one cried or shouted, all on their bellies with heads and eyes down. There was a sense of benumbing panic, as cold as waiting for death.

The Maoists were spraying the train with bullets. They lobbed crude bombs to break open the doors. They failed to enter coach B1. However, in the adjoining AC-II coach, a bullet passed through the wooden support near the door, hitting a youth who died. The Maoists, however, could not enter that coach.

The Maoists kept throwing crude bombs while continuing with gunfire for nearly one and half hours. In between, they entered the sleeper coach behind us and asked the passengers to get down. Hiding below my seat, I slightly lifted the curtain and saw them being led to the nearby forest where they were made to stand in a row. The belongings of the sleeper coach passengers were looted

The recent Chhattisgarh incident flashed across my mind. No Government Railway Police or Railway Protection Force jawan had come to us.

There was hope only after the train started moving around 3pm, stopping very briefly at the stations. By 3.25pm, we were at Kiul Junction – a safe zone.

“No food, no water, no police for safety and no hope of survival. Only God was with us. We are out of hell,” was the common refrain as passengers shared their experiences with a sense of collective relief.

(As told to TOI reporter Abhay Singh)

