Two Railway employees get acquitted after 36 years

'The case took 36 years to be decided. This actually reflects the pendency of cases,' said Mahendra Jain, the lawyer who appeared for one of the accused

In March 1986, five people were accused and booked on charges of stealing copper cables and wooden planks from Western Railway’s Mahalaxmi Depot. Now, 36 years after they were booked, two former employees of the Western Railway were acquitted by a Mumbai magistrate’s court.

The case, that dates to March 1986, was registered under the Railway Property (Unlawful Possession) Act, 1966, commonly referred to as RP (UP) Act, wherein the Railway Protection Force (RPF) was the prosecuting agency.

Out of the five accused in the case—Gajadhar Prasad Verma, Javer Bachu Bhai Merchant, Arun Bhai F Parikh, Sachin P Parikh and Ramesh Ramakant Kadle—Kadle was discharged, while Arun and Sachin had pleaded guilty.

Verma and Merchant, Accused No 1 and Accused No 2, stood trial in the case and were recently acquitted by Metropolitan Magistrate J C Dhengale.

“The case took 36 years to be decided. This actually reflects the pendency of cases,” said Mahendra Jain, the lawyer who appeared for Merchant. “They were innocent and have now been acquitted. But all these years they faced the trauma of being an accused, which they were not. They were innocent,” Jain told DH on Tuesday.

The RPF had booked the accused after it recovered the cable from a godown in Deonar and wooden planks from Kandivali. While Verma was a truck driver, Merchant was the chief traction foreman—both are now retired and live in Mumbai.

“The prosecution has not been able prove that the copper cable which was recovered from the godown of Cable Sales Aid, Deonar, and wooden planks recovered from Room No.524, Building No. 27 situated at Samata Nagar, Kandivali, was a railway property. The prosecution has also failed to prove that the property was stolen by accused no. 1 and accused no. 2,” Dhengale noted in his order