All passengers who boarded the 4001 Up Samjhauta Express (Attari Special) on Sunday evening had to have valid passports and visas. At least four who reached Attari this morning were found to have been issued tickets without these documents. Two booking clerks at Old Delhi Railway station, Rakesh Kumar Maini and Surender, have been suspended and Railway staff are now wondering if there were more who got in without the mandatory checks.

If that shows a security lapse, it’s not the only one. Trains are an easy target for terrorists and it is startling to see how Samjhauta Express, the key rail link between India and Pakistan and, therefore, one of the most vulnerable to attack, was seen as just another train requiring not one special security measure.

Consider these:

• The Old Delhi railway station has 23 Close Circuit Television Cameras, but Platform Number 18 from where the Samjhauta routinely departs, has none. Officials said several requests had been made but no one heard.

• Of the 14 coaches, only four with 280 seats are reserved. All tickets are issued the day of departure, from 8 am to five minutes of departure. Physical checks of the passengers or their luggage before boarding are next to none and there is hardly any effort to sanitise the train before journey.

• There were just six security personnel on duty on Sunday to check the 2,000 or so people — including those who had come to see their relatives off . Only two of the security men had hand-held metal detectors. There is no dog-squad at the station. Additional DCP (Railways) R K Jha said even these routine checks were not the responsibility of Government Railway Police (GRP). “We are entrusted only with maintaining law and order and checking crime at the railway station. Performing checks on the passengers is not our job,” he said.

... contd.