UNESCO

Railway Protection Force

Mumbai

The blueprint

On an average, four cases of mobile theft and pickpocketing are reported at CSMT daily. Between January and March this year, nine cases of robbery were reported at CSMT, besides 400 cases of theft, and a case each of passenger being drugged, assault, molestation, and kidnapping.As part of the no crime-no begging-no hawking campaign, the Central Railway has instructed the(RPF) and the Government Railway Police (GRP) to ensure the following:.. No passenger should get away with bullying co-passengers by blocking the doors and cornering seats by spreading/throwing towels.....Take preventive steps to ensure drugging crime (passengers looted after being drugged) is eliminated... No encroachment on ladies’ coaches and compartments reserved for the physically-challenged.....Complete eradication of hawking from the station premises... Remove all touts from the station premises.The Central Railway’s senior divisional security commissioner (Central RailwayDivision) KK Ashraf said he and his team were confident of CSMT achieving the no crime-no begging-no hawking status beginning May 1.“We have identified stations vulnerable to criminal activities and anti-social elements. Some of these stations are CSMT, the Lokmanya Tilak Terminus, Thane, Kalyan, and Panvel.to curb crime at stations is ready and we’ll start from CSMT,” Ashraf said.Assistant Security Commissioner (Central Railway) NN Sai Prasad, who’s part of the project, said the RPF will be heavily involved along with GRP and the teams in-charge of round-the-clock surveillance will undergo rigorous training.Hemant Bavdhankar, in-charge of CSMT GRP, said his team was already on high alert, bringing down the number of criminal cases at CSMT by almost 40% in the past 12 months. “We’ll be happy to work with the railways for crime-free stations. To begin with, we need to have tighter control at the CSMT’s entry/exit points,” he said.