Following confusion between the railway police and the city police over area of jurisdiction, it took the city police two days to register a case when a college clerk committed suicide on railway tracks in Sola area on Saturday.

Similar has been the case with many such incidents where investigations were delayed by days together because of the confusion over the jurisdiction. The matter gets worse when the spot of the crime is railway tracks.

According to railway police every year they get 100 to 150 bodies on tracks and these cases are not taken up by any police station.

G D Trivedi, Deputy Superintendent of Police (Railways), said: “Whenever any crime is committed on railway tracks, city police immediately transfers to us. If we don’t rush to the spot, the bodies keep lying on the tracks disturbing the rail traffic. We have attended many emergencies on humanitarian grounds even if they were not in our jurisdiction. In many cases, we have even picked up bodies from tracks and sent for post- mortem even when we were not the investigation officers, as local police turned their backs.”

On the other hand, city police said there are many confusing technicalities in the functioning of the railway police. To this, the railway police said their jurisdiction is strictly based on the government notification and leaves no room for any confusion.

Explaining the technicalities of their functioning, Trivedi said, “Railway stations are divided into flag stations and full fledged stations. Barring Kalupur station in Ahmedabad, all others are flag stations. There are up and down signals on the tracks of full-fledged stations that have distance or outer signals. The distance between the outer signals –3 to 5 km – is out of our jurisdiction. Any crime happening beyond the signals is in the jurisdiction of local police area. Moreover, any crime that happens in or around the flag station that does not have these signals automatically goes to local police only.”

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