A 42-year-old man, who claimed that his late mother had died in last week’s triple-train accident at Odisha’s Balasore in order to land a government job, has been apprehended by the Railway Board, officials aware of the matter said on Thursday.
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The officials identified the man as Sanjay Kumar, a resident of Patna, adding that his mother had actually died in 2018. They said that after the Balasore accident, he travelled to Delhi with an aim to meet railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and seek a job for himself.
Officials told HT that Kumar, who was caught on Thursday, had not only been to the minister’s residence with his claim but also had visited the Rail Bhawan on two separate days. “When Kumar reached Vaishnaw’s residence, he was directed to Rail Bhawan in order to meet the minister. It was then that he approached the minister’s office and was apprehended after he kept changing his statements,” a railways official told HT.
Giving details of the case, one Railway Board official said, “Kumar approached officials, claiming that his mother was a passenger on the ill-fated Coromandel Express that crashed into a goods train and died in the accident. However, we got suspicious when we found that he did not have any proof of his mother’s travel.”
A second Railway Board official told HT that when Kumar was asked to show information related to his mother’s travel, he could not answer. “He claimed that he booked the ticket via a travel agent but did not remember his name. He could also not prove that his mother was on the waiting list.”
The second official said that Kumar did provide his mother’s photograph. “We started searching for his mother at all the stations at which the train had halted before the accident. Our aim was to locate her with facial recognition technology. However, when we could not locate her at any of the stations, we grew more suspicious.”
It was then, a senior official handling the case, said that Kumar confessed that he was lying about his mother’s death. “His mother had died in 2018, but after the Balasore accident when the railway ministry announced ex-gratia payment to the family of passengers who had lost their lives, Kumar decided to approach the minister and ask him to give a job rather than the compensation amount,” the official said, declining to be named.
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Kumar, the senior official said, has claimed that he was unemployed for a long time and was “depressed” about it. “We are investigating to understand if employment was the only aim for him to have details of the minister’s residence and office,” he said.
