Shards of glass from one of the broken windowpanes lie strewn on a berth of the Rajdhani on Saturday; passengers Madhu Mishra with her son Shiva Mishra in Calcutta. Picture on right by Pradip Sanyal

Calcutta, Aug. 21: Stones shattered windowpanes in three bogies of a Sealdah-bound Rajdhani Express last evening while the train was passing through an area in Uttar Pradesh notorious for its criminal gangs.

The attack triggered panic among passengers, five of whom suffered minor injuries, a Railway Protection Force (RPF) inspector said.

He said the incident took place in a slum area between Aligarh and Gawna.

Several windowpanes of coaches B1, B5 and B9 were shattered, passengers said. All three were three-tier coaches.

“The train was hurtling past a slum area around 5.30pm when I suddenly heard the sound of glass breaking. Before I realised what was happening, I saw shards of glass strewn on the floor,” said Madhu Mishra, 29, a passenger on B1. The Delhi resident was coming to Calcutta with her husband and four-year-old son.

Mishra said the 14 passengers in the compartment were so scared that they huddled together for an hour. She said there were no security personnel in the compartment at the time of the incident. “Only some pantry staff were there. It was only after an hour that some RPF personnel came to our compartment,” Mishra added.

The passengers of the three compartments had an altercation with the RPF men whom they accused of being late in arriving.

A railway official said the RPF personnel removed the glass fragments and covered the windows with cardboard.

The train, however, did not stop until it reached Kanpur, the next scheduled halt, at 9.30pm. “More RPF personnel boarded the train from Kanpur and guarded us for the rest of the night,” an elderly passenger said after the Rajdhani reached Sealdah at 10.15am today.

“We did not pull the chain as the attack stopped after some time. But we felt helpless because there were no security personnel in our compartment at the time of the incident,” said Rama Dutta Mukherjee, 50.

The Durgapur resident, who was travelling in the B1 compartment, said a stone missed her by a whisker. “The stone could have hit me on the head. We are lucky to have escaped with only scratches and minor cuts, ” she said.

Dutta Mukherjee said most of the passengers in the three compartments spent a sleepless night, fearing further attacks.

The passengers, however, are clueless about who threw the stones. “The curtains were drawn and we did not see anything. Only one of my co-passengers said he saw a youth throwing stones,” a passenger said.

Railway officials said such stone attacks on trains were common in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.