For A Railways Job, Patna Man Falsely Claims His Mother Died In Odisha Train Tragedy

In an attempt to bag a government job, a man from Bihar went to Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw's residence and claimed that his mother died in the Odisha train tragedy, Hindustan Times reported.

However, his lies got exposed as the railways official started hearing his case. The 42-year-old man is identified as Sanjay Kumar. Following the tragedy in Balasore, he went to Delhi from Patna.

"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," the daily quoted a railways official as saying.

A Railway Board official said that he approached the authorities saying that his mother was a passenger in the ill-fated Coromandel Express and she died in the accident. However, they got suspicious after he failed to provide any proof to his claims.

In fact, when asked to produce details about his mother's travel, Sanjay Kumar did not respond. Another official said, " "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."

He also did not show his mother's photo. The official said, "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."

However, soon Sanjay Kumar confessed that he was lying and his mother had died in 2018. After the government and railways announced the compensation to the kin of the victims, he decided to approach authorities for a job instead of exgratia. "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 added.

Going by his confession, Kumar is unemployed and depressed about not having a job. The authorities are further investigating whether unemployment is the only reason for his visit to Vaishnaw's residence.

Similarly, a woman had approached the authorities in Odisha fraudulently claiming a dead body as her husband. The 40-year-old named Gitanjali Dutta from the Baramba area in Cuttack appeared at the temporary morgue in North Orissa Chamber of Commerce and Industry Business Park in Balasore where the bodies have been kept for verification by the family members.

"I suspected her intention as she looked unusually calm unlike the bereaved kin of the other deceased passengers. She saw some of the photographs of the unidentified bodies that we had displayed outside the temporary morgue. She picked up one photo and claimed him to be her husband," The Times Of India quoted Bikas Kumar Palei, an SI, as saying.

The crash involving Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express and Shalimar-Chennai Central Coromandel Express and a goods train occurred near the Bahanaga Bazar station in Balasore on June 2. At least 288 people have died in the tragedy while over 1,000 have been injured.