Calcutta/Malda, July 2: A customs officer conducting a raid was beaten up and his service revolver snatched by smugglers on the Sealdah-bound Darjeeling Mail this morning.

A few hours earlier, passengers in a sleeper coach of the same train were robbed in north Bengal.

Between Kumarganj and Samsi stations in Malda, a gang took away necklaces, rings, wristwatches and mobile phones from sleeping passengers.

Anand Garg, a trader from Kurseong, alleged that cries for help went unheard. Neither railway police nor railway employees came to help.

The railway police superintendent at Siliguri, Mahendra Singh Punia, said the incident took place past midnight.

Lalita Jhunhunwala of Pune, who came to Darjeeling for a vacation, said her daughter’s necklace had been snatched. She also alleged that the miscreants molested some of the women.

When the train reached Malda station, the passengers demonstrated and train services in the division remained suspended for nearly an hour.

“There wasn’t a single GRP (Government Railway Police) jawan there,” said one of the passengers.

The passengers lodged a complaint on reaching Sealdah in the morning. “Since the robbery took place in Malda, we have forwarded the complaint there,” an officer said in Calcutta.

Samsi station manager D.K. Dakur said long-distance trains are often made to halt between Samsi and Kumarganj for long periods and “miscreants make good use of this opportunity”.

Several robberies have reportedly occurred in this region, Dakur added.

A few hundred kilometres and hours after the Malda incident, Santanu Roy, a superintendent of the preventive wing of customs, boarded the train at Burdwan with eight others. They split into three groups.

The team led by Roy encountered a group of men unwilling to let it search the compartment close to Calcutta. An altercation started.

As the train slowed down near Sealdah, another group of men, apparently passengers, entered the compartment and threatened the customs trio.

The customs men were then overpowered and thrashed.

Getting a tip-off, a GRP team boarded the train when it was about to enter Sealdah station and nabbed one of the miscreants. The rest jumped out of the running train.

A GRP officer said the gang was carrying foreign watches, shoes and perfumes.

Roy’s revolver is yet to be recovered. Neither railway nor customs officers could say why he did not fire even when attacked.

“The customs officer (Roy) had to be given five stitches,” was all that a GRP officer at Sealdah said.