Chennai: A bag containing 360 power bank batteries, two circuit boards and wire was found with smoke emanating from it on railway track near Sanatorium railway station on Tuesday morning.
The police tended to downplay the incident saying they were “just abandoned batteries”, but the whole package near the tracks seemed far more sinister. The bag was found between two main suburban tracks on the stretch between Sanatorium and Chromepet.
Motorman Nagendra Rao, driving a suburban between Tambaram and Beach, noticed the bag with smoke coming out of it as he passed the Sanatorium railway station. He alerted the control room as well as the Tambaram railway stationmaster at around 7.15 am. The area was then cordoned off and, based on the alert, all trains passing through the Sanatorium station were stopped either at Tambaram or Chromepet.
RPF sniffer dogs and bomb detection and disposal squads were also dispatched to the scene. After the BDS members found that the bag held no immediate threat, it was moved to the RPF station in Tambaram by 8 am after which the rail services were back to normal. The bag's contents were emptied inside the RPF station and forensic experts found all the batteries had been connected using a wire. There were two circuit boards along with the batteries.
Talking to reporters later, KK Ashraf, senior divisional security commissioner, said that an investigation into the incident was already on. "RPF and railway police are together probing the case. It looks more like the project of a college student. It is possible the student was taking the bag in the train and smoke started emanating and so he decided to dump it on the track. But the probe will cover all the possible angles," he said.
It could be also a bag missed by an electrical shop owner, police said. Sources revealed that there are no CCTV cameras in the Sanatorium station. "The bag could belong to anybody. A flight tag was found torn off from the bag. But the battery pack had a price code on it. We are hopeful of finding from where those batteries were purchased," police disclosed.
The security agencies seemed jittery enough to downplay the incident even as policemen at the scene were found chasing away photographers. Some reporters were asked by the police to delete pictures taken on their phones inside the RPF station.
