train (12130), which was to leave Howrah Wednesday night at 10.10 pm, Thursday morning at 4.45 am left the place of origin. It reached the city at 7.30 am on Saturday, 24 hours after its scheduled arrival time of 7.20 am.
It was a recap of the events of June 29, when the Howrah-Pune Azad Hind Express reached Pune almost on time, just a day later, after months. The train from Howrah reached Pune station at 7.32 am, barely 12 minutes behind its scheduled time of 7.20 am. It was to reach Pune on the morning of 28 June.
Due to the latest incident, the passengers taking the train were in a panic. Subhash Chandra Das (61) and his wife, Anjana (58), reached Howrah station around 9 pm on Wednesday to board the train, which has been facing multiple delays and cancellations for over a year now. as his son, Siddhartha DasWhile Manjari, who works in Pune and lives in Mumbai, was waiting for their arrival, the couple’s journey turned into a nightmare.
“After reaching Howrah station, they came to know that the train was running late and would leave on Thursday at around 3 am. It was not possible for them to return to their home in Barrackpore, which is about one-and-a-half hour drive from Howrah, and then come back to the station during the odd hour of 3.30 am. They stopped at the station itself,” Siddharth said.
The train finally reached Howrah at around 4.45 am on Thursday. “The train reached Pune at 7:45 am on Saturday. The train was halted for seven hours near Belapur station in Ahmednagar district. Passengers were not aware of the reasons for the halt,” he said.
Siddharth said, “Both my parents are diabetic and dependent on insulin. They had to rely on wafers and missed their insulin shots.”
Railway officials are attributing the continuous delay of Azad Hind Express to the ongoing works in Bilaspur Railway Division under South East Central Railway.