On Wednesday, the Internet was abuzz with a news story about a train going 160 km in 'wrong direction'. The Railways has trashed the story as 'factually incorrect.'

In a lengthy clarification issued late in the evening, Anil Kumar Saxena, spokesman of the Ministry of Railways said that "The news circulating in certain sections about ‘movement of a special train for Kisan passengers between Delhi to Kolhapur’ is factually incorrect."

In what is termed as the real set of events that happened, the ministry issued "the correct information about the train."

According to the Railways, the organisers of a Kisan rally in Delhi had booked a special train on payment basis for running between Kolhapur(central Railway) to Delhi and back.

"The road-side stations demanded by the organisers were Karad, Miraj and Manmad in Maharashtra. Train was not headed to Kota in Rajasthan as reported in some section of Media. These special trains are run through a route which is conveniently available to the railway operation. Earlier, when this train came from Kolhapur to Delhi, it took Western Railway route namely via Nagda, Kota, Ratlam, Mathura, as it was the best route available from operation point of view at that point of time," it said.

"In the return journey from Delhi to Kolhapur on Tuesday i.e. 21.11.2017, the Railway Administration found that the best path available is the Central Railway route i.e. via Mathura, Gwalior, Jhansi, Bhopal, Itarsi route. Hence, they decided to run this special train from Delhi to Kolhapur via this Central Railway route(which in any way is the natural route for these destinations). In case of such isolated special train, the trains keep moving safely through proper messages from one control to next control," the Railways said.

"The passengers might have felt confused because of the different route used in their return journey. They in any way had no reason to worry as it was to reach their destination Miraj, Karad, Manmad, Kolhapur comfortably," the statement said.

It also maintained that, "there was no negligence, there was no diversion, there was no unnecessary running of the train, there was no case of wrong signal, as reported in a section of media and the passengers were at no point of time stranded. It was held up for some time at station Banmore Railway Station near Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh because of some path congestion problem.

The statement added: "Once, the path became available, the train moved ahead smoothly towards its destination viz. Manmad, Karad, Miraj and Kolhapur.The train had a pantry-car where eatables were available for the passengers. The passengers may have felt some inconvenience because of some delay in the movement of the train during the journey."