Passengers protest against cancellation of the Garib Rath in Ranchi on Friday. Picture by Prashant Mitra

Ranchi, April 24: People power ensured the railways ran the Ranchi-Delhi-Garib Rath Express today, albeit on a 75-km detour, after passengers protested its last-minute cancellation in view of a Maoist bandh in the state.

Initially, the Ranchi railway division wanted to run the train on its normal route via Daltongnaj. But at 5pm, just 10 minutes before the scheduled departure time, the train was cancelled.

Then, while some passengers queued up in front of counters to get their tickets cancelled, others insisted the railways run the train. They gheraoed the authorities on the platform and started shouting slogans.

“The railways should have informed us well in advance if they wanted to cancel the train,” said Ravindra Sharma, a Delhi-bound passenger.

Just as the situation turned serious, the railways agreed to run the train on a longer route which led to a huge commotion with passengers rushing towards their respective compartments.

Senior divisional commercial manager S.K. Ahirwar said they decided to cancel the train after an “intelligence input” from Dhanbad said the area around Latehar and Palamau districts was unsafe for travel.

“We got the information from Daltonganj at 5pm and hence could not inform passengers earlier,” said Ahirwar.

However, the railways began looking at alternative routes as passengers kept insisting the train be allowed to run. Instead of the usual Daltonganj-Garhwa route, the authorities realised the Gomoh-Mughalsarai route wouldn’t be useful too. “The coaches of Garib Rath cannot run on any track. And the tracks in Gomoh-Mughalsarai were technically unsuitable for the train,” explained Ahirwar.

Finally, the railways decided on a third alternative — via Moori-Purulia-Jhajha-Kiul-Asansol-Patna-Mugalsarai-Delhi instead of Gomoh-Mugalsarai. But that meant, passengers would have to travel around 75km extra to reach New Delhi.

If the railways wanted to be safe, they had their reasons. Two days ago, Naxalites had taken the Barkakana-Dehri-on-Sone-Mugalsarai train and its passengers hostage for four hours at Hehegarha station in Latehar district on Ranchi-Daltonganj route.