Passengers embarking or alighting at the station do so with dread, as they have to pass through a 300-metre, dark, winding road where muggings and robberies are common.
With the sprawling Nayandahalli slum located adjacent to it, the road is a haunt for anti-social elements looking for easy pickings.
Robbing passengers off their mobiles and wallets at knife-point and snatching of chains from women by groups of three of four youngsters is a common occurrence here, say railway sources.
“A minimum of ten robberies are reported each month and these are only the reported incidents,” says a source. An employee said he had personally attended to a few passengers, who have reached the station with blood streaming out of the wounds inflicted on them. This being a small railway station, not a single railway policeman is available here. “Passengers curse us, but we are helpless,” he added.
Residents of Shamanna Garden, Nayandahalli, Byatarayapura, Banashankari, Rajarajeshwari Nagar, Pantarapalaya, Deepanjali Nagar and Chandra Layout frequent the station. It is only trains running between Mysore and Bangalore, in both directions that halt at this station. Open tickets alone are available here.
Passengers taking the Shimoga-Bangalore-Mysore Passenger, which leaves the station at 5.30 am and the Mysore-Bangalore-Shimoga Passenger, which passes here at 10 pm are the most vulnerable, an official said. “Anti-social elements target single men or unaccompanied women,” he added.
Electric bulbs are removed or the electricity wires cut into by anti-social elements, said another railway employee. Such incidents used to occur randomly earlier, but with the area and its surroundings developing rapidly in the last three years, the numbers of those using the station have quadrupled. “It is much easier to come here and buy an open ticket to Mysore than to run the gamut of the traffic signals to reach City railway station, only to find a serpentine queue there. Hence, many take the risk of venturing here,” another senior official added.
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