Das at the railway hospital after he was assaulted on Monday. Picture by Main Uddin Chisti

May 20: Station master Monomohan Das has filed a complaint against two policemen among the 1,200 who ran amok at New Cooch Behar last night on their way to Howrah after election duty in the district.

The armed keepers of the law also did a riot act in Malda district’s Eklakhi station this morning. Like his counterpart Anil Kumar in Cooch Behar, the Malda police chief Satyajit Bandyopadhyay, too, arranged for food for the law enforcers who went around chasing railway employees and smashing windowpanes of the station master’s office.

Kumar said the FIR has been lodged with the Government Railway Police (GRP) which would also carry out the investigation. There were also some GRP personnel among the rampaging policemen from Howrah district.

The law keepers had beat up Das, who suffered a stroke a few months ago, assistant station master Niranjan Burman and other employees after a special train supposed to take them back to Howrah arrived almost nine hours late.

The additional divisional railway manager of Alipurduar, Parthasarathi Mondol, has expressed anger after inspecting New Cooch Behar station. “It is not possible to name all the policemen involved in yesterday’s incident, but in the FIR the station master has mentioned the names of Somen Bahadur and Somnath,” Mondol said.

Some railway employees said Somen Bahadur and Somnath were named in the FIR, as these were the names on the breastplates of two of the most “terrifying” policemen.

Bimal Sarkar, the station master of Eklaki, said the policemen had first barged into his office demanding to know why two other trains were allowed to pass while the special rake stood waiting. “They then smashed the door and windowpanes of my office,” said Sarkar. He said the Balurghat-bound link train and the Jha Jha Express headed for Siliguri had to be allowed to pass, as they were running on schedule. “But the policemen were on a special train. Moreover, it is the control room in Malda which instructs us. We would have let the train go, which we did at 8am, if we had received instructions.”

Justifying the food distribution, the Malda police chief said: “As there was no water or lights on board the special train, the policemen had got agitated. We had informed all hawkers at Malda station to be ready with food and water.”

In Cooch Behar, station master Das remains a terrified man. “Their riffles were pointed at me, I was being threatened while my colleagues were beaten up inside the office,” Das recounted.

Mondol said the armed policemen had snatched a walkie-talkie from one of the railway employees on duty at New Cooch Behar station. “They also took away bunches of keys and we have had to replace locks and break locked cupboards. We are sending a report to the Railway Board,” the additional divisional manager said.

Mondol said the station master as well as all the employees of the station were willing to go anywhere for a test identification parade to point out the culprits.