The Chennai police have found that 240kg of banned gutka was smuggled into Chennai from Bengaluru on train number 12658 Bengaluru Mail on Wednesday morning.
Southern Railway has ordered a high-level probe into the lapse.
That the contraband, packed in six bundles, was loaded on a leased parcel van coupled at the front of the train, unloaded on platform 9 of MGR Central station around 5:45am and taken out through the parcel office on a tempo has shocked officials.
The leased parcel vans are given out on contract to private parties who pay railways a fee. Southern Railway has initiated a process to ask the lease holder for an explanation, said an official.
The tempo was on its way towards the Elephant Gate area when police from the C2 Elephant Gate police station intercepted it. After checking CCTV footage, they established the sequence of events.
TOI has already reported on irregularities at the station’s parcel office. Officials said many contraband items pass through the parcel office unchecked. Last week, red sanders was seized from its premises. Also, gutka from the northern states used to be brought to Tamil Nadu on the Hazrat Nizamuddin-Kanyakumari Thirukkural Express. The train, which started from New Delhi, stopped for an additional15 minutes in Madurai where the contraband was unloaded. Three big seizures were made from the parcel vans of the trains.
An official said recently the RPF had flagged how there were many cases of theft, robbery or other malpractices involving leased parcel vans but the Government Railway Police was reluctant to file cases and investigate.
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