India is often deemed unsafe for women travellers and there have been various incidents which further strengthened the notion. But recently a woman travelling alone on a train in Maharashtra received immediate help from railway officials when she directed a tweet to the Twitter handle of Railway minister Suresh Prabhu.
Around 7 PM on November 26, the passenger, Namrata Mahajan tweeted “”@RailMinIndia plz plz help in train no 18030. One male passenger harassing me at Shegaon. I am in train and terrified,” when she was passing through Shegaon railways station.
@RailMinIndia plz plz help in tarin no 18030 one male passanger harrassing me at shegaon I am in train terrified
— namrata mahajan (@namratamahajan1) November 26, 2015
She was soon asked for her PNR details so that help can be sent to her immediately. They also asked her to contact the 182 helpline that Indian Railways introduced earlier for emergency situations.
According to news reports, a senior officer Ved Prakash immediately noted the tweet and contacted Central Railway chief PRO, Narendra Patil. According to Mr. Patil, a tweet asking for her details was sent to her Twitter handle. Soon after she shared details of her position in train, she was attended by RPF jawans as the train reached Bhusaval railway station.
@namratamahajan1 Please your PNR immediately
— Ministry of Railways (@RailMinIndia) November 26, 2015
The male passenger due to which Ms. Mahajan sent the tweet, was shifted to another coach by RPF. Relived after the assistance, Ms Mahajan sent another tweet thanking the minister “”@RailMinIndia sir help reached to me. Thanks a lot sir,”
Indian Railways is putting in lot of efforts to improve the experience for travellers and recently we have seen them adopt social media for offering better customer service. We saw that few weeks back when the video of a misbehaving ticket counter employee went viral. With Ministry of Railways working to drive up customer satisfaction, we look forward to a better train travel experience in future.
