MUMBAI: The station master of Vile Parle was manhandled by a mob of commuters on Tuesday night because of the disruption in Western Railway's services caused by the derailment of a local train in the morning. Ashok Azad was taken to WR's Jagjivan Ram Hospital (JRH) and admitted to intensive care unit.He was shifted to the general ward on Wednesday afternoon.

The attack on him occurred around 11pm on Tuesday . “His arms were bleeding and he complained of pain in the chest and back. He had been pushed around by the crowd,“ said his wife Sushma. The Andheri GRP has lodged an FIR, but no arrests have been made yet.

Around 100 services were cancelled on Wednesday . Services limped back to normalcy by midnight, but anger and frustration among commuters persisted the day after the derailment of a Virar-Churchgate fast local caused WR's most massive disruption in about a decade. WR's divisional railway manager (Mumbai) Shailendra Kumar said normalcy will resume from Thursday .

While the adjoining Virar fast corridor was opened to traffic at 7.35pm on Tuesday , it took over 21 hours to start the Churchgate fast corridor. The derailment had occurred between Andheri and Vile Parle stations.

Around 3am on Wednesday , WR decided to use a crane to remove the derailed coaches from the track after it became clear that the rake could not be pulled out by an engine because of a broken axle in the fifth coach, said Kumar.

Commuters had to travel for two hours and 30 minutes from Virar to Churchgate because of the disruption, even after taking early morning trains on Wednesday . Andheri resident Kapil Arora said, “Services on even the Harbour line were not running till CST. I had to take the Metro to Ghatkopar to board a Central Rail way train to Dadar.“

At Borivli station, a commuter, Shibu George, said, “I have been waiting for a train for 40 minutes, but there is none at sight.“

A WR official said that signals on the third, fourth and fifth tracks near the accident site were put on ` A marker', which means that every train that passed the spot had to halt before proceeding. “This led to a loss of punctuality.“

