Parcel scam unearthed at Chennai Central railway station

CHENNAI: A major

racket

involving the parcel office at

Chennai Central Railway Station

has emerged with only a fraction of costly cargo booked on trains making it to the destination. The rest, it has been found, is smuggled out in collusion with

railway employees

to be sold in the black market and bills forged to show the entire consignment has been offloaded at the destination station.


The scam came to light when five employees led by an office-bearer of Southern Railway Mazdoor Union (SRMU), the sole recognised union in the zone, allegedly tried to destroy evidence of the scam at the station on Tuesday and were later suspended. A copy of the suspension order naming D Yuvaraj, the office-bearer, A Karuppuswamy, Anthony D Cruz, Thiyagarajan and Khadar Basha is with TOI.

Four days ago, sources in Southern Railway said, a consignee discovered that only 19 of 30 cartons of vests (baniyans) had been transported to Howrah by Coromandel Express. Each of the cartons, sent from the garment-manufacturing hub of Tirupur, contained material worth Rs 1 lakh. However, employees in the parcel office at Chennai Central station had managed to get a bill from the Howrah station to show that all 30 cartons had been unloaded, top sources said.

A complaint was lodged and a Chief Commercial Inspector (CCI) on Tuesday conducted an inspection and secured the 11 cartons lying on a platform at Chennai Central. Yuvaraj and the others came to know of this, went up to the CCI and forcefully tried to take away the 11 cartons which formed part of the evidence into the scam, a senior official of the Chennai division told TOI. A tussle broke out and a complaint was registered with the Railway Protection Force (RPF), which is the guardian of railway parcels, he added.

This issue was raised with the senior divisional commercial manager who immediately suspended the five employees, the official said. Dakshin Railway Employees Union (DREU) working president A Janakiraman said the parcels that were ‘held back’ at the station were later sold in the black market. “The 11 cartons were worth 11 lakh. The railways should conduct a thorough probe into the malpractices,” he said.

A senior Southern Railway headquarters official said the issue showed how the parcel business was compromised. “There are widespread malpractices. We are awaiting a report.”. SRMU divisional secretary Paul Maxwell said he was not aware of the issue and declined to comment. Divisional Railway manager Naveen Gulati did not respond to calls.