Twelve days after he supposedly travelled by train from Gorakhpur to Mumbai, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi’s secret train journey remains shrouded in mystery.
According to railway records, Mr Rahul Gandhi boarded the biweekly Lokmanya Tilak Superfast Express train which left platform No. 2 of Gorakhpur junction at 8.45 pm
on October 18. There were nine SPG personnel with him in the S-3 compartment with an e-ticket (PNR No. 2640829587). Mr Gandhi was booked simply as “Rahul” in the reservation chart. What makes Mr Gandhi’s journey mysterious is the fact that he travelled for more than 30 hours in the second class sleeper coach train but not a single person got wind of the same. Even the TTI of the coach said he was unaware of the VVIP passenger.
“In today’s times when every second person carries a mobile phone, it seems absolutely unbelievable that Mr Gandhi could travel second class without being noticed. No one saw him enter the Gorakhpur station and no one saw him alight from the train at Kurla station in Mumbai. (A section of the media insists that Mr Gandhi got down a few stations before Kurla) If a VVIP like him had boarded the train, the media — there are stringers even in the smallest towns these days — would have surely swarmed down. Rahul Gandhi is one of the most recognised VVIPs in the country,” said a senior UP official.
The official said that ever since a local TV channel broke the news of Mr Gandhi’s train travel on October 28 — 10 days after he reportedly travelled — efforts were being made to trace some eyewitnesses.
”Surprisingly, no one is ready to say anything on record which adds to the mystery element. It is only the media which is going overboard on the issue and responding to the media euphoria, we have written to the central government on the issue because Rahul Gandhi is a SPG protectee and this is a violation of security norms because the state government was not informed.
Interestingly, even the state Congress leaders were completely ignorant about Mr Gandhi’s travel and not even a single leader is willing to comment on it.
One senior leader, on condition of anonymity, however said, “This is not the first time that Mr Rahul Gandhi has kept his travel plans a secret. Last year, he did the same when he went to Shravasti to spend the night in the home of a dalit family. However, at that time, it took less than half an hour to discover that Mr Gandhi’s whereabouts were not known and within the next one hour, his presence was traced. This time, it seems strange that this time it took 10 days for the news to be known to all.”