A day after the Delhi-bound Bhubaneswar Rajdhani Express was hijacked on the Kharagpur-Tatanagar route for over six hours by Maoist sympathisers near Jhargram before its subsequent release, paranoia among train passengers led to heavy cancellations at Kharagpur and Howrah stations.

Howrah and Kharagpur are two important stations that see heavy bookings on the 67 trains that take the Kharagpur-Tatanagar route. Till Wednesday evening, there were 520 cancellations in Howrah station and 286 in Kharagpur station for different trains. From Bhubaneswar station, there were no cancellations except one in the 2421 Bhubaneswar-New Delhi Rajdhani Express that bypasses the section, which has heavy Maoist presence.

Additional Divisional Railway Manager of Kharagpur division of South Eastern Railway, Dinesh Kumar, described the cancellations as “unusual”. “Normally, we see 40-50 cancellations a day. But this (high number of cancellations) is unusual,” he said.

Kumar said it was not possible to give security to all the trains on the Kharagpur-Tatanagar route due to manpower constraints. “At the most 10-12 RPF men can be provided in trains like Rajdhani who would walk around each coach. But for trains like Purushottam Express there can’t be any special security,” he said.