Diva, a day after: slow trains, traumatised commuters

A day after experiencing a massive rail roko, Diva railway station had yet to return to normalcy on Saturday. Commuters were further inconvenienced on Saturday as trains were delayed by over 10-15 minutes. Moreover, the rail roko also appeared to have left many commuters traumatised: fearing a repeat of Friday's chaotic scenes, many commuters preferred not to travel by train on Saturday.

Praful Desai 19, a commerce student from Bedekar college, Thane said, "I have bunked my classes and I am heading to my friend's house. I preferred to take a rickshaw as I am sceptical about train services running normally even today. I was really scared of the crowd yesterday. So, rather than going to college, I planned to take the day off with my friends."

Badlapur resident Sammruddhi Lawate said, "Yesterday's incident impacted today's rail services. I was delayed by almost 30 minutes on the way to my personal errand. The railway officials should have made an announcement about these delayed services yesterday itself; they must have known yesterday that trains will run late today. If they had made such an announcement yesterday itself then many commuters would have skipped work today."

Railway officials, however, claimed that they had made announcements about changed rail schedules. A railway official from Thane said, "Yesterday we made an announcement about trains which are running and which got cancelled. It was only yesterday evening that we came to know about the damage (wrought by the vandals) after five hours of damage assessment. There were more than 8 to 10 rakes with broken windowpanes. These were sent to the rail yard for repairs, which will take a day. Yesterday's incident has affected today's services, too, but we are continuously making announcements about the changes in the train schedule."