A 27-year-old man from Gujarat slammed the Indian Railways and the RPF for being ineffective after he was forced out of his train by a crowd of ticketless travellers despite having a confirmed 3-tier AC ticket. Anshul Sharma wanted to rush home and spend Diwali with his ageing parents but instead, he was manhandled, laughed at, and made to watch as the tightly packed train that was supposed to take him home to Ratlam, pulled out of the Vadodara station without him.
Sharma said that he was shocked to find the train jampacked with ticketless passengers when he reached the station. “I could see that the station was crowded but since I had a confirmed ticket, I wasn’t worried but when the train arrived on the platform, I was shocked. People were literally spilling out of it,” he said. Visuals of the night he shared on X are now viral.
The coaches were so crowded that passengers even had difficulty opening the doors, Sharma said. He could not open the door to his coach as well and tried to enter the next coach, but soon found himself sandwiched in the crowd. “Forget about me, there were women who were stuck in the crowd inside the train,” he said “They kept requesting others to let them at least somehow move and get to their seats.”
But Sharma realised that travelling like that was impossible and decided to get off the train and seek help. He and his friend, who had come to see him off, found a couple of policemen and approached them for help. “They laughed at me,” Sharma said. “‘What can we do in this mad rush?’ they said. I was like at least try to help us. What is the point of you even being here then?”
Sharma then tried reaching out to the Railways and the passenger helpline centres but in vain. “Tickets were raised and declared resolved without even offering me a solution,” Sharma said, adding that he wants the Railways to refund his fare of Rs 1,173.95.