A passenger who fell ill travelling in the Rajdhani coach with a faulty AC. (Amit Datta)

About 70 passengers of the Sealdah-bound Rajdhani Express had to endure a broken air-conditioner in their coach and alleged stale food as they travelled through unprecedented temperature of over 46 degrees Celsius across Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

This was the second such incident this month in the same Rajdhani train. On May 12-13, the train travelled 1,454km from Delhi to Sealdah with a malfunctioning air-conditioner (AC) in a two-tier coach, which had 50 people.

On Sunday, after the train pulled into Sealdah around 11.45am which is an hour behind schedule, the passengers lodged a complaint with the railway police about the faulty AC and spoiled food served for dinner.

“The air-conditioner was not functioning from the time we boarded the train at 4.30pm at New Delhi railway station. It was extremely hot outside and equally unbearable inside because the windows were sealed and circulation of air was almost nil,” said Sumita Chakraborty, wife of singer Nachiketa.

“We kept complaining but no one did anything till we reached Kanpur at 9.25pm,” she said.

The passengers said they staged an agitation at Kanpur station asking the authorities to fix the malfunctioning AC.

Although railway technicians were sent to repair the faulty AC unit in Kanpur, they left after an hour without properly fixing the problem.

A 15-year-old girl fell sick because of the heat and suffocating conditions inside the three-tier (B11) coach.

Afrin Khatun of Park Circus said she felt breathless from the time the train pulled off New Delhi station and started vomiting once she reached Kanpur.

“It was hot and humid inside the compartment as the AC was not working. I almost fainted,” Afrin said at Sealdah after enduring the 19-hour torture.

“There was no doctor on the train. When my fellow passengers demanded that a doctor be made available, one came to examine me around 11pm,” she said.

Other passengers too complained of breathlessness and extreme discomfort. “Some of the passengers fell ill because of the stale food served for dinner. The chapati, chicken curry and curd were stale,” alleged Mohammed Salim, 50, a trader from Madhyamgram.

He said the authorities wanted the sick passengers to disembark in Kanpur so they could be treated at a nearby railway hospital. The passengers refused.

Sumana Das of Barasat alleged that the police manhandled some passengers, including women, at Kanpur station. “They tried to force us out of the train,” she said.

“When the train resumed its journey from Kanpur several minutes past 11pm, we found that the repaired AC was not working. We complained to the train staff but they ignored us,” Pramita Singh of Dum Dum said.

An Eastern Railway spokesperson admitted the fault in the AC, but refuted the allegation about the food. “If there was any problem with the food, passengers of other coaches too would have complained,” he said.

Sources said the railways were deploying add-on coaches from maintenance yards to tackle the holiday rush. Railway officials, however, maintained that there was no problem with the “extra” coaches.