Sidhu...Sidhaarth Roy Posted October 15, 2010 Report Posted October 15, 2010 [img]http://l.yimg.com/t/frontpage/ghost_train_30.jpg[/img]Fear of a'ghost in sari' forced Purulia station in Maoist hub to remain closed for 42 yearsSouth- eastern railway employees have refused postings to a West Bengal railway station, fearing the ' ghost draped in a white sari' which is believed to haunt the station.A year after the re- opening of the Begunkodor station, closed for 42 years, private ticket- selling agent Dalu Mahato is the sole worker there.Begunkodor, located 43 km west of the Purulia district headquarters in West Bengal, was shut down in 1967 after the death of a railways employee, days after he was believed to have seen the apparition of a woman in a white sari running after a passenger train.The death triggered such panic that soon after, all railway employees, including the station master, fled Begunkodor. Passenger trains too would give the station a miss.Mahato, from nearby Nalkuti village, sells tickets at the station for a commission of ` 1.25 on each ticket.On an average, he sells around 100 tickets every day." I make sure that I have friends nearby and make it a point to leave by 6 pm every day," he says.Passengers taking the train out of Begunkodor are greeted with empty ticket counters. There is no stationmaster, ticket checkers or Group D staff either.During last year's Lok Sabha election campaign, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee had promised to turn Begunkodor into a full- fledged railway station.The station was opened on September 1 last year after appeals by Member of Parliament Basudeb Acharya, a former chairman of the parliament's standing committee on railways.At present, only three passenger trains plying on the Hatia - Kharagpur and and Bankura- Dhanbad routes halt at Begunkodor." It is a story cooked up by the south- eastern railway employees to avoid being posted to the remote station," Acharya had said earlier.The chief public relations officer of south- eastern railways Saumitra Mazumdar claims there is no mutiny within the ranks regarding appointment to the haunted station." We did not appoint a station master as we thought it was unnecessary," he said.The local farmers are at the receiving end of the problem." We can't take the train to transport the local produce to the markets," said a villager.
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