Innocuous-looking Umar Mali is home to bootleggers and illegal loggers, whose operations extend to Nashik and Gujarat. Every day, a group of villagers boarding the trian at Khardi alight at Umar Mali thanks to an unspoken pact with the motormen. So, on Tuesday, when Gopalan took the train directly to Kasara station, the villagers thrashed him for his `defiance'.

According to a senior motorman, tonnes of firewood plundered from the neighbouring forests find their way to Diva, while arrack is sent to Nashik and beyond fromDiva by local train.

Firewood brought by the headload is auctioned daily at around 3 pm between the Konkan Railway and the Central Railway tracks on the Diva level-crossing itself. It fuels the numerous distillation centres dotting Diva. Some of it even filters into the Gujarat's southern districts despite the prohibition in the neighbouring state, excise officials say.

The motormen admit that they are aware of the goings-on but oblige the villagers for fear of reprisal.

``A stickler for rules, Gopalan did not know who he was dealing with when he refused to stop at Umar Mali,'' one of the motorman said, questioning the wisdom of merely providing them with an armed escort. ``Are they trying to suggest that the Government Railway Police is unaware when, under their very noses, almost a tonne of firewood and arrack worth lakhs is transported aboard the trains daily,'' he asks.

Enquiries at Bangarwadi, one of the Thakar villages near Umar Mali, revealed the racketeers' modus operandi. While firewoodposes no problem when it leaves by the 1.30 am local from Kasara, the arrack which can get the villagers into trouble if discovered on the station is offloaded at Umar Mali. From here, the villagers carry it to the nearby Mumbai-Agra highway, says a villager who works as porter ferrying the illegal liquor to waiting trucks that take it to Nashik and beyond.

Both the GRP SP of Pune section M K Karve and special IG S Chakravarthy were in Kalyan to take stock of the situation. Karve, who went on the same Kasara train last night said he had got off at Umar Mali and made inquiries at the padas around. ``We have formed four crack teams to scour the padas around for more information on the attackers,'' he said.

Chakravarthy, when apprised of the logger-bootlegger angle, promised to ``explore this possibility.'' He said, ``Very soon the Kalyan division (from Kalyan to Karjat/Kasara) would be shifted to Mumbai section from Pune. While there is already a proposal to do so after the railway commissionerate comesinto being, we're trying to push for it even before that.''

He admitted it was difficult for the Pune SP to monitor happenings as far as Kalyan. ``In any case, as the motormen's stir has clearly proven, any problems on this division affect the Mumbai suburban services directly,'' he observed.