Toilet water in tea can: railway vendor fined

A video of railway hawkers filling tea-coffee cans with water from a toilet in the compartment, which had gone viral, has finally led to action being taken against the railway vendor.

The video was shot by a concerned passenger on the Charminar Express at the Secunderabad station in December 2017.

The person who was shooting the video can be heard asking the vendors, in Telugu, why they took the cans to the toilet. The vendors, however, do not answer but only hand over the container to another hawker standing on the platform.

The railways, which had conducted an investigation, said the two persons seen in the video are unauthorised hawkers engaged by platform catering stalls.

A fine of Rs 1 lakh has been imposed on contractor P Sivaprasad, who had claimed that the tea vendors were only transferring the leftover beverage into another can by using the toilet as a cover. He also claimed that no toilet water was mixed in the beverage.

The commercial department of the railways, however, said the act was unhygienic and wrong, asking the IRCTC to slap the fine.