Government Railway Police (GRP) at Pune station is currently engaged in a peculiar exercise. A team of five from the agency is travelling across the country for the past one month for dealing out warrants and locating persons accused of various crimes at Pune station since 1983.

For old times’ sake: The cases are related to crimes like robbery and illegal travelling detected at Pune railway station. File Pic

The city railway court is not in a position to handle all the pending cases of people, who were arrested for crimes like robbery, chain pulling, illegal travelling, but were let out on bail. So, GRP has been directed by the court to issue warrants and produce the accused before a judge at the earliest. 250 such persons have to be tracked down by GRP in states like Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, etc.

So far, the squad hasn’t had much luck. “These cases happened long back, and the accused are from different parts of the country. Many of them gave phoney addresses, or moved away later. So, when our personnel reach the locations registered with us, we often fail to find the accused. Also, even if we succeed, it is difficult to identify them, as the photographs in our records are old,” said Abhay Parmar, senior inspector (GRP) at Pune railway station. “While we have to follow court orders, we are facing a staff crunch,” he added.